Travails of the traveller

Saturday, 4:05 a.m. EST. I’m cabbing to the airport for an early flight out west. As a kid, 4 a.m. felt imbued with magic. It seemed like the furthest one could go, like setting out towards some chronological vanishing point. But at the moment it just feels early.

12:10 p.m. MST My first point of destination is the Banff Centre for the Arts. Upon my arrival, I find myself short of breath. I can’t tell if it’s because of the altitude, the excitement of travel or because I’m having a heart attack.

7:30 p.m. MST After being introduced, I notice a slip of paper on the podium. “You’re going to be great,” it reads. The words are punctuated by a smily face. This note, written by a complete stranger and possibly not even intended for me but for some speaker long past, suddenly and improbably, makes me feel better.

7:35 p.m. MST In the midst of speaking from the stage, it occurs to me that the note read “you are going to be great.” Not “you are great.” What the note actually implies is that, one day, in the indefinite future, I will be great. But at the moment, I am not. Insecurity sets in.

Sunday, 8 p.m. PST Onto the next gig: Vancouver, where I’m being interviewed. The moderator plays tape from my old radio show. In the clip, my friend Gregor is setting up my dating profile. “I have the photo for your profile all picked out,” he says. “I cropped it really tight around the eyes. You have wonderful eyes. Actually, just your left eye is wonderful.”

“What’s wrong with my other eye?” I ask.

“It’s fat,” he says. “If I were you I’d consider an eyepatch.”

“Why do your friends treat you so poorly?” the moderator asks when the clip ends.

I say, “If friends were easy to take and made you feel better, they wouldn’t be called friends. They’d be called drugs.”

Monday, 11 a.m. EST On the flight back home, I’m seated beside a mother and her 6 month old. He spends a good deal of the flight drooling onto my arm and crying into my ear. He has one brown eye and one blue eye. “Maybe he’s the reincarnation of David Bowie,” I say to his mother. Bowie had different coloured pupils.

“I don’t think Bowie is like the Dalai Lama,” she says.

“Maybe he’ll be reincarnated for centuries to come. The Bowie Lama,” I offer.

The baby laughs as though he understands. “Whatever the case,” I say, “your baby – he’s going to be great.”