The Celadon Tomb

It had been a year of unstable realizations – or perhaps more apt, a year of realizing instability. Everything that had seemed settled suddenly was not. Four moves inside of a calendar year, family health drama – the mental kind, which had been underwritten for years with shallow and misguided “solutions” that had ultimately compounded further the fractures in need of repair. Then there was the breakup. The longest, and arguably the most successful relationship he had ever managed, however, boundaries had never been a strong suit, especially, when in love. The third move to the shabby sublet on the west side of town proved to be the final straw, and whatever was left between them disintegrated – this rented house, was not a home. Finally, as the summer wore on and the necessity to move a fourth time forced itself into the astral assortment, he was dismissed from his job, just as the ink was drying on the latest lease agreement.

He had half cocked his ear to his thrift-store Sony Dream Machine when it began piping out the world update and the local news, but that was over an hour ago and the radio and he had fallen back to sleep. Winston had hoped putting the alarm in the hallway and setting it to a radio station he liked would help him improve his sleep hygiene and wake earlier. Though this had helped, probably only worked seventy to seventy-five percent of the time. He stirred again to a mostly silent room and took the idea of getting vertical more seriously. Despite his best efforts of late to leave his phone charging on his worktable, he had brought it to bed with the attitude of a young child needing to be weaned off sleeping with a blanket or stuffed animal, he was not quite ready.

By this point, sleep hygiene and morning routines be damned, mindlessly scrolling through one of his feeds he caught himself reflecting on the color and warmth of the teak lined aft cabin in which he was laying aboard the Gavia, a small yacht he had found himself living on after the fifth move – a move that required an unprecedented Marie Kondo style purge leaving him in the possession of three relatively large, matched, black duffle bags and a modicum of faith, that a dramatic coastal shift would provide the geographical cure to his planetary misalignments – and contemplating that all important question that most would eventually have to answer: cremation or burial? The idea of coffins terrified him, as did the accidental chance of being buried alive. He knew this fear was unfounded but try as he might he could never divorce the two. A cremation furnace seemed equally disturbing, if not slightly more so. Not only was there the box to contend with, but also fire. He had never had much tolerance for extreme heat and the only thing Winston liked less than being too hot, was being too cold; so cryogenic freezing was out of the question. For a moment, he acquiesced to the underground solution being tenable on the condition that, like his newly inhabited floating pied-à-terre, it too be lined with teak. Winston’s thumb continued to twitch rhythmically from the bottom of his phone screen toward the top, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. He decided, perhaps, a small tomb or mausoleum would be best; do the teak paneling and have radiant in floor heat to keep the chill out. Keeping things above ground felt far more comfortable. He would have a clause in his will drawn up to ensure a weekender was packed with a few of his favorite cashmere sweaters and an extra pair of jeans to ensure a comfortable river crossing – hashtag modern pharaoh; he immediately wondered how many posts, if any, had been tagged as such but did not bother checking. Truth be told, taxidermy had been high on the list of potential alternatives to oven and burial avoidance, but recent life events and this morning in particular made Winston think that the taxidermy option may have something to do with an unexplored and deep-seated pathological F.O.M.O complex. He took a deep breath, he really felt like he was getting to know himself.

He began to rise. It was well after nine at this point and he was two hours behind his made-up schedule, and though still mindlessly scrolling and double tapping his phone screen he opened his elastic bound planner, that he had been religious about using since January one, to find that the only thing he had to worry about was an infrared light therapy treatment at 12:30 – there was still time to get some writing done. He closed the little black book and stared at it for a moment. On word of his leaving Toronto, a dear friend had hosted dinner, and as a parting gift presented a waxed cotton tote full of essentials for the trek across the country. Among the items was a black Moleskin daily planner. He had for quite some time been spreading his thoughts and ideas across multiple notebooks, digital devices, scraps of paper and sticky notes. However, this year would be different and to ensure he would remember to remove the plastic and crack the spine, kept the little bound calendar pride of place on his worktable since late September.

Winston had grown up with a combination of esoteric teachings and new wave spiritualism with a healthy residue of Catholic guilt, both in part thanks to his mother. At this moment, the Catholic guilt flogged and bored into his un-caffeinated and unmedicated morning thoughts: how could he have screwed up such a simple routine, again? Some things, he felt, could be done perfectly. On the other hand, the here and now was all he had left, and Winston figured the lazy Monday morning must have some deeper concern for his cosmic clock. Perhaps the extra hours in bed had prevented a quantum ripple which some how realigned him with his life’s purpose. He walked the narrow passage past the head and up three steps to the main salon of the boat. He flicked the small tab on the electric kettle and proceeded to take his daily dose of big pharma. There was a pill to help him focus, a pill to keep him calm yet elevated and another pill still to keep certain physical parts functioning properly during intimate engagements regardless his level of disassociation. Though he had been on and off a various assortment of medications for years, and though he hated to admit it, he was better off when he was taking something. The tiny chemical cocktail offered some chance to separate himself from his incessant and self-absorbed intellectual panic and observe his Zizekian participation in late-stage capitalism as something other than bourgeois terrorism. He did not worry about his coffees to go in disposable cups and single use utensils because he did not own a car, he felt fine not recycling for the same reason. In his mind only two suggestions ever seemed to prevail. The first: conserve absolutely everything, or as much as you can because if you don’t the icecaps will melt, and the whales will drown. The second: treat yourself – you deserve it! You’ve worked so hard this week! Splurge! Wellness is next to Godliness! Its ok to cheat occasionally, you’re worth it! He reconciled the two belligerently opposing options by assuring himself that it would be highly unlikely that everyone would decide to treat themselves on the same day, and because of that, that both the icecaps and same day delivery had a chance at survival. In his mind we were at a point in history where the evolution of technology had started to present as magic. If you spoke enough about what you wanted the universe began conspiring with algorithms, and eventually you picked up your smartphone or opened the lid to your laptop to see exactly the advertisement necessary to make your dreams come true.

The phone call came shortly after 10 in the morning, it was unexpected and unlike Winston to pickup. He was out of the habit of answering unknown numbers seeing as it usually availed the voice of a man trying to sell him a duct cleaning service for the HVAC system he did not own or a recorded message in Mandarin— which Winston once had a colleague from Guangzhou translate for him as she was standing near when one of these calls came through— announcing itself as the Canadian Revenue Agency demanding money for unpaid taxes and threatening deportation if payment was not made. However, this call was different. He had won. His face went flush and the voice on the other end of the line, though excited, had started sounding like gibberish. Twenty. Thousand. Dollars. He thanked the person for the call and was relieved when they mentioned a follow up email. His phone signaled with a double beep indicating that the caller had hung up. His mind was spinning, and he could feel and hear his heart beating, it seemed to have moved from his chest into his head. He sat down at his worktable concerned for his lack of breath, only to realize he had been holding it. The Gavia was still, the sun was out, and the French press was still half full of hot coffee. The peace was broken by the sudden squawk of a Steven — this was the nickname he had bestowed on all seagulls that plagued the marina.

A 2003 remastered version of Bill Evans’, You Must Believe in Spring played through his Bose speaker and Winston thought, how could one not? The sudden windfall had reinvigorated his imagination and had resuscitated his checking account, if only for a few days. Though his grandmother had always tried to instill the importance of never lending and never spending at least ten percent of whatever he made, he never seemed able to remember the sage advice while he was flush. Money burned a hole in his pocket, it did not matter if it were protected by a billfold tucked into the breast of his overcoat or doubled over in the front of his jeans, it immediately began to smolder. Then, like a cross between a phoenix and the survivor of a nuclear explosion he had evolved; risen and reborn anew, yet severely malfunctioning. The twenty-grand had evaporated. There was the purchase of a round trip ticket on British Airways, First— $15,501.69. He would spend the month of June with an old flame in Brussels. Neither of them was sure of anything and each felt they might be too similar for it to actually work out, but then again they had flirted with engagement. And of course, two thousand promised on a lark to Brandon so he could purchase a Chow Chow puppy. Then there was the Georgian furniture. The bachelor apartment he had leased was microscopic, but the furnishings, of which there were few he felt were more of an investment than money spent. It was only a matter of time until the market for traditional furniture rebounded. Mid Century Modern was just so… mid century. The pair of stone lamps were just shy of a couple grand – the fellow would not budge on price, but they were musts. Even though it was a rental, he had to change the countertops and every surface save the floors but including the coffered ceiling was to be painted in a high-gloss celadon; he could not think of a color better suited to enveloping the subtle patina of his newly acquired Georgian mahogany. Winston lay in bed waiting for sleep listening to a podcast about presence of mind while simultaneously revisiting best possible future furniture placements. As the Gavia rocked with a great deal of anxiety due to an unrelenting gale, he was suddenly struck by familiar thoughts and could not pry himself from wondering if perhaps celadon was an appropriate color for the interior of a tomb.