Thomas Trofimuk - Waiting for Columbus - Columbus Book

Recent Journal Entries

pretty normal

April 12, 2013

Hello. How are you? I’ll be your host for this blog, as usual. Listen, I want to talk a little bit about the snow that’s forecast for this weekend. TWENTY centimetres is nothing!!! It’ll be gone soon enough. We ought to feel sorry for the snow. It’s desperately trying to hold onto something that can’t be held. New life will come. Life will renew. Regardless of the snow. So, I will be out there in the snow, finding the beauty of it, loving it, actually.

This is today’s sorbet. Talk soon…

Normal

Things were pretty normal this morning.
Made lunch for the daughter. Made instant Starbucks.
Walked out onto the back deck with my coffee steaming into the cool air,
and breathed. It’s a beautiful morning.

Things were normal.
Well, okay, the house is completely ripped apart because there will be painters in there painting all day, and tomorrow, and the next day. And I am planning a funeral service. Making hard calls to my dad’s friends. Arranging for the church, meeting with reverends. Fretting the details around this death. And most importantly, pushing feelings to the side so that I can function – purposely not feeling anything so that I can get things done.
Inviting numbness, and nothingness. Thinking about anything but this.
I can try to make sense of this later – I can let the pieces float in the air
for now.
Later on, I will let them fall into place.

Like I said, things were perfectly normal this morning.
Until I dropped the daughter off at school. Waited, and waited to pull away from the curb. Drove half a block and was stopped by a teacher with a hand-held stop sign. A dozen kids from kindergarten to grade 12 walked in front of my car across the road. I thought about their safety and how I played a role in it. I watched them. I watched the teacher. I thought of old Holden Caufield and his field of rye, standing at the edge of the cliff, keeping those children safe – catching them before they fall. And somehow, this scene broke me.
I sobbed uncontrollably as I waited and watched.
I sobbed as I fumbled for my sunglasses.
I smiled, but I kept on bawling
like a goddamned three year old.
Not a pretty picture.

April 12, 2013 ~ Link ~ Commentary

...and I grabbed his finger

April 6, 2013

I know, I’ve been away from you little “blog feature on my website”…Sorry about that. It’s been a weird past few months, weeks….and so on. I’ve been writing. Working on something new. And, there was a death in this family. Last Sunday, my dad passed. He was coming up on 92 years…and the past six months were not good. He was not perfect, but he was there every morning (except when he was on the road — he was a salesman who traveled), and he was there at night. He chose to be a dad. He chose to be a father. And my parents picked me. I was adopted. My dad used to tell a story about how they were looking at available babies and he pointed at me — and I grabbed his finger. That’s something. I’m posting this poem for him. It’s my favourite “moment poem” that he makes an appearance in. Okay. I promise to write more here. More frequently.

Coyote

Sandy brown, tawny fur streaked with black –
this coyote sideways steps on the packed snow.
She dances in her own sweet skinny-assed time
in front of my car. Eye on me. One eye always on me.
And I pull over. Stop.

“What are you doing?” my father says.
I do not point. That would be disrespectful.
“Coyote,” I say.

You must be up from the river valley, I think.
But what are you doing here? (The river valley is
many blocks of houses away, and roads, and fences, and traffic.
And yet, here she is, in the middle of the city, a few hundred
feet from the house where I was young)

You think you hold nature back with your cities, Coyote says.
You think you’re safe? You think I can’t adapt to this?
Coyote smiles at me. She looks at my car with a careful,
ancient disdain. She looks at my car as if its heft and velocity
is irrelevant – its occupants insignificant specks of fluff.

“How do you know that was a coyote,” my father asks.
“It looked and moved like a coyote,” I say. I am curt.
My patience, after four hours of dinner theatre is thread-bare.
“You’ve seen them before,” he adds, “in the mountains?”
He does not appear to need my confirmation.

She moves onto the sidewalk, into a front yard, around a pine tree
and then is gone – disappeared.

I am suddenly sad about this coyote.
But I know in my heart it is not the coyote.

It is my impatience with my father, who has been talking non-stop
for this 45 minute drive, about everything and anything – like a three-year old.
He has been filling space with words and I have been silently blaming him
for being lonely. Like being lonely was his fault.
I help him into the house, hang up his coat for him, and say goodnight.
In the car, I sit for a long time as the past and the present
and the future swirl the night – they blur everything. And then the coyote
trots by my car, across the boulevard and into the trees.

April 06, 2013 ~ Link ~ Commentary {2}

Frost lichens

February 22, 2013

It’s Friday. Outside the backdoor, on my way to work, all the glass on the back deck was splattered with these lovely frosty images. Frost lichens. Ephemeral and frail and beautiful.

Frost

February 22, 2013 ~ Link

L’OISEAU RARE takes flight this February 13, 2013!

February 11, 2013

Wednesday is the day for the release of “L’OISEAU RARE” into the world, this Wednesday, February 13, 2013 – “Waiting for Columbus” in French. Congratulations to my Quebec publisher (vlb editeur, Groupe Ville-Marie Litterature inc.) and to Sophie Voillot for her beautiful translation. I am very excited to have Columbus out in the world in another language. Bravo! Brava! If you want to know more, you can go here. Yeah!!!!!

Rare

February 11, 2013 ~ Link

New Year...new me?

January 9, 2013

Hello. How are you? It’s 2013 now and this is my first post. I have no resolutions, but I have incorporated some changes. Nothing I want to talk about because I think talking about it just invites failure. Just like when you have this idea for a book, or for something in a book – if you talk about it, you put the energy of the words into the air and you lose something. You can get it again when you go to write it but it’s been changed.

Thought I’d post a preview of a sorbet here for you. The sorbet will come out on Friday – it’ll be mailed to all 800 of you across the planet – but here’s an early peak at a half-formed idea. Hopefully, on Friday, it’ll be shaped and focused and palatable. So, we shall see how it changes…

Also, a big THANK YOU to the editor at the “The 40 Below Project,” Jason Lee Norman. He’s going to publish a few of my poems in the 40 Below anthology. The 40 Below Project was created by Jason with the help of a grant by the Edmonton Arts Council. Jason, along with Kasia Gawlak, are the co-founders of the Edmonton creative writing collective Words with Friends.

The aim of this project is to collect words, stories, and artwork about and inspired by the city of Edmonton in winter. The idea is that while winter in our city can be harsh at times, our experience with it is also something quite unique. It can also be a time of year that inspires art and people coming together. This project is open to anyone who thinks they have a story, poem, essay, photograph or piece of artwork about Edmonton to share.

Also, check out The Road Home with Bob Chelmick on CKUA tonight. You might hear a piece by Trofimuk. Where ever you are in the world, if you have internet, you can listen. It’s 9-10 p.m. MST at www.CKUA.com.

Here’s a sorbet hint –

I like it that you cry

I like it that you cry every day.
There is so much to cry about in the world.
There is no shortage of sorrow.
Sobbing seems like an honest reaction to the world.
And laughter. Laughter is an honest reaction too.
Laughter is the lit candle that pushes back at the darkness.
But crying is different. It seems more complex than laughter.
Some people never cry – or very rarely.
Inside these January doldrums when light is rationed –
when light is a precious commodity – it seems even more
appropriate to pause and let that release wash through
whatever sadness you hold – whatever bundle of pain you
hold gently in your lap.

I do not imagine you are crying continually – that would
be weird and depressing. I see a woman who pulls into
the parkade in the morning, finds a spot for her car, turns
the engine off, and sits as the muffled silence of no radio
and no heater fan and no car engine enfolds. She does not think.
She sits and waits. This is a private ritual.
When she is done, she will dry her eyes and go for coffee.
As she walks through the mall, she will be attuned to the small beauties.
She will notice the intricate car tracks in the brown-sugar snow on the road.
She will hear the clip-clap, clip-clap of that woman’s boots as she runs late
for work. And she will smile at her barista because the weight he carries is
evident in his eyes. It’s as if her malaise is a good tabby cat that waits in the car.
Before she shuts the car door, she will open the window a crack, so the cat
has a steady supply of fresh air.

January 09, 2013 ~ Link

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