Walter Kist & the Seven Whorls - Chapter 7

August 22, 1981.

Dear Kist,

I can hardly wait to meet you in Toulouse. Toronto is a hot sticky town and I don’t know anyone here. I miss Vancouver, her mountains and ocean. Here, there are no mountains, just endless skyscrapers. And no salt water! Just a lake that isn’t safe to swim in. Remember how we used to dance in the rain? In this city the rain just blurs the ink in my diary.

My walks are not the inspired meandering of a West Coast day but rather a series of wantings and wanderings. Maybe it’s just that I miss you and all your wild notions and soft sighs, your photographing everything within range, your chakra talk, your big heart.

Yesterday, I came across a bust of Mary Pickford just around the corner from The Epitome (my dad’s place). Born in Toronto, she lived near where her statue now stands. I shot Miss Gladys Smith (her name before stardom) from my golden ringlets, of course.

My dad’s estate consists of boxes full of photos, books, clothes, junk - and a crateful of debt. The apartment is paid up for two more months but the phone has been cut off. After everything is sorted, I will meet you wherever you are.

XOXO Anahata

PS. I’m sending this to the return address on your envelope (Francois’ place?) but if you don’t get it… Well, then I will just have to send you telepathic messages of love.

Journal Entry

Aug.30/81

Western style bowties, colourful and crushed, including one for Christmas, red with green sparkly holly trim, and one for Easter in yellow and mauve. Bolo ties and neckties - but scant family ties, as evidenced by an abundance of photos, all with my mother cut out.

And Western novels by Zane Grey and Troy Nesbit and Louis L’Amour. Western-themed coasters for oblivion-themed cocktails, ashtrays shaped like cowboy hats for the smoking away of endless days. Also, clothes and shoes and socks - lots of socks, some still in their packaging, many of which I opened and wore.

I had a strong urge to send all his stuff to the Sally Ann and be done with it. But much of it I recognized from our life together and it seemed like a part of me. Tossing it would’ve been akin to tossing a little sister or a pet. So I laid things out on the carpet in categories, shuffled them about then finally boxed them, to what end I had no idea.

To clear my head I often go out to walk and shoot. I named my camera Frank, something about the way I wanted to shoot my world or about the way Mary Pickford wore my hat.

Of course, I’d been happy for Kist, taking off like that to Europe; but sometimes I couldn’t help feeling brushed off, abandoned - like my dad’s stuff. Maybe that was why I wanted to take care of each and every item contained in his boxes.

I couldn’t grasp the fact that he was dead: one day, drinking with the boys at the Selby; the next - gone, lights out, goodbye. Yet everywhere in the apartment I could smell that particular blend of tobacco smoke and Old Spice that was him. Where had he gone?

One day, as I sat brooding, a book fell off a dusty shelf. It was one of his treasured Westerns. I opened it to a random page and read a passage about a cowboy who wouldn’t go to a showdown unless he had his lucky socks on. I wondered then: is death more like lights on than lights out?

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