Paul Cameron Brown

“ Simon always maintained not everyone could handle too much soft-pedalled reality. Out of the dense formations of endless fast food chains, Simon's novelties were to titillate the jaded restaurant goer.
Interpretive signs and amenities guided the erstwhile onlooker to the "ultimate," in fantasy dining. Rhinocerous pizza was served flanked on an inflatable horn. For the less adventuresome, a lobster pizza with drawn butter could be had either with tangy dough balanced along its claws or imprints of lobster cut into the succulent crust. ”

“ He would prove white was an aberration. He and he alone would disfigure her perfection. A good pipe should camouflage its owner's hazards. He had only to tar and weather his rival or await the smoke to cloud the delicate perfection of that effeminate form.
Reveling in the sense of this new found power, Clarence became puffed up with more than his own smoke, and his thoughts fell into a dry rattle. The owner feeling this unaccustomed rush of heat and experiencing hard drawing from his companion, vigorously tapped the stem against an open door's edge. ”

“ The wide expanse of blue water pleases him. Certainly the area holds potential--many hard and softwooded trees not unlike his native Brittany. In the warm glow of a July morning, he belittles his misfortunes, the present trials sapping little Ste. Marie.
The kindly father dashes the recent sleep from his eyes with cold brook water. The shimmer seems to fit the haze his current thoughts pivot in. Sweet water country might yet prove both fortress for Christian souls and strength at feeding Louis' New French dream.
The sun is no longer in the sky. ”

“ The Scots had their order of the garter and a thistle, of all things, was emblematic to that northerly land. Why not a dandelion even if it were a bit of a dandy all dressed in that, shudder, colour of cowardice, yellow'? People were so emotional choosing a red flower simply because its colour reminded them of shed blood.
Adua was hurt to the quick and could bring no comfort to himself either in hope of future aerial flights or the prospect of his greens being eaten next season as tasty helpings. ”

“ The old man knew if he did not avail this one a boat--a safe one at that--he would put his hands on a craft of some sort. Accountability, he thought. They mustn't care about their own lives. Still, there was a living to be made and it was a marina, albeit a closed one. He would still get a boat one way or the other, he mused again as he watched the light fade in the evening sky. He pulled his collar sharply. Yellow leaves were beginning to form a mat on the wooden stairs leading to the shed. He could just make out land's end against a funnel gray sky. ”

“ Jake was hoping so. Gingerly, he fingered memories of what he would have done had Scot returned the night as intended. Still, if all held true, there was nothing to implicate him, even if Humboldt had died unexpectedly. Jake was in the process of reassuring himself. All had been taken care of. Scot dead and now the car a convenient shambles--the only possible source of clues or evidence. How tidy fate had been. Strange. If only he had managed to get the money prior to Scot inadvertently doing away with himself. ”

“ Two is a fonder number gracing the clock than one--a relief from monogamy, a rightful place to start. Three is too midway, cantankerous in its sound, still four is drab and stony and the sun lies too low in the sky for any truthful expression of real afternoon. ”

“ He was thinking little thoughts like strawberries in spring or what the icy water must have felt like closing around the throat of Scot. If he had only lived like himself, got into farming and enjoyed life instead of dashing off to lose touch with reality. ”

“ CITY THE INSECTS INVADE
"From the indigo straits to Ossian's seas, on pink and orange sands washed by the vinous sky, crystal boulevards have just arisen and crossed, immoderately inhabitedby poor young families who get their food at the green grocers. Nothing rich-the city." Arthur Rimbaud
The old man sleeps with his weeping. Another old one pauses with her cats on a fire escape while nursing a sore like a precious stone. A garbage can is an herbivore grazing on stalks of ringworm. Vermin are the pool sharks of this brothel polishing off the tenements' fur lined rails. ”

“ He wished a certain notoriety, a dance on pigeon feathers, to be a pipe of Nordic proportions--a yard's length of smoke. If he was to be engrossed in smoke, he at least wished it to arrive in exotic blends, from textures rich with the warmth of their climes. Turkish root, jabiru, all were curiously better than the stuffy domestics he had come to know.
But alas, Clarence for all his fuming saw nothing ahead but more of the depressing humidor. His lot was to be a rack in a provincial smokehouse kept aglow by a poor man's fervour for post-natal security. ”

“ Once, when the sky was young and the spirits were expressing their wishes, peals of light and thunder damaged the heavens until they were swollen and purple. Rain fell like leaves as the victors banished the fallen from the clouds. ”

“ Meg was still on the subject of Humboldt. Seems as for all his questions he had met a bitter end. To hear Meg tell it, one evening after the leaves were down--a cold evening at that--Humboldt, a recluse and bachelor recently separated from a sister with whom he had lived, was fetching wood. ”

“ Unemployed pizza cooks and pizza rub girls were soon at the end of the dough line. In fact, so great was the influx of misplaced persons that the term "on the dough," for a time replaced "dole," as an euphemism for hard times. Extortionists began to muscle in asking for their share of the pizza pie. Newspapers began gloating over the imminent bust of the "infantile," pizza passion.
Still, Simon confided his trust in the same observation that must have motivated Lord Sandwich when he launched his invention. People will always search out the delicious and the readily available. ”

“ Home was a blackened stem yellowing with age against a bewhiskered face. There was no knowing when a pang of nicotine might hit, so he spent his off hours in a coat pocket or a sleeve's rear end eyeing the world from a very shaky distance. Life was indeed strange when one was rudely hauled out of near hibernation into the brunt of day, stuffed into an asphyxiating batch of tacky powder, then pressed into open flame. ”

“ The night is soft about the city's lights. Water cascades in the distance, while small, black crickets' shovel sounds around pricked ears. The diminished man ignores this, instead busying himself with drawing lions on a vast sheet of blank paper. ”

“ The poppy was an Oriental import, too foreign to be assimilated. And what of its reputation for buccaneering. In some countries it was illegal even to grow them! Wasn't it worse than the demon weed since its seeds carried the substance necessary for narcotics? Surely, anything brewed of opium should be shunned in real life. Convinced of his moral superiority, Adua could at least comfort himself with the realization his breed was of a fine upstanding kind, even if reduced by circumstance to humble origins. His kind went about their business peacefully enough. ”

“ Still, a man needed a pint from time to time so he doubted if he would discontinue the practice.
He shook his gabardine jacket clear of his arm and stepped into the night. Overhead a moon glimpsing the clouds made through an effortless sky. He might, should impulse seize him, step through the border area of Protestant Ulster to reach his home near Falls Road. Suddenly, the pub door became a fringe of orange heat amid whirls of smoke. Barely clear of the doorway, MacGuire was propelled by the force of the explosion's impact clear of danger. ”

“ Any shark is long gone."
It was now Steve's turn to renew the apprehension. The size of the animals and the crash of their drift against the boat, was sobering reality of this stretch of water's potential for the unexpected.
"Cliff, I have all the makings of a complete smart ass. All this talk of being an experienced diver--that's all armchair politics at this point. Sure, I've done my bit in pools and their like. But the immensity of this place terrifies me. Just staring down through the shades of colour, seeing the breadth of that reef, what with all this salt and heat, is taking its toll. ”

“ Rip's progress in his new home is eventful. Early in his stay, he gleefully corners a porcupine and gets a face full of quills for violating that one inescapable fact accorded to all life on this planet; introductions are always in order in untried situations. ”

“ One day, when the Earth was a glorious garden and ruled by a brilliant sun flower towering above the plants of her domain, Monarch butterfly, not yet her familiar orange, complained she wished to be large as a bird with petal wings translucent to the sun, folding with the rain. ”

“ Perhaps a runic stone will fall from tangled roots when he burns the dead stumps of trees deciphering once and for all why men labour or think at all. The fence swirls on and on in growing amnesia becoming the very touchstone of all purpose, stones from Jericho's Wall or the passkeys taken from our material existence. Gabriel, the archangel, will sound his trumpet here, he is assured. The dead and unburied of nameless acts of toil and dread will stand a stone's breadth across this fence. The Face of God will be seen in the pact nature has made with earth and stone. ”

“ From the first, Simon maintained that food and pleasure were inseparable. Moreover, since food could be a vehicle for fantasy, even more tellingly it could provide an outlet for self-expression.
The lily pad pizza was typical of his new approach and was a twofold operation: a parent might buy an inflatable plastic "pizza," the size and shape of a small wading pool. It had an edible spout and dehydrated "sister," pizzas attached to the parent ship that allowed a child to fantasize while sailing and enjoying his favourite food. ”

“ He is perspiring now and the rocks shove face-like projections into the consciousness of forest and that periphery area, his clearing.
The fence begins to melt as if in a haze and the logic of clearing this vast expanse of earth and rock escapes him. He thinks of each rock as the buttress of a treasure box he has just hidden and is loath to dislodge further stones. ”

“ Steve was yelling--all at least twelve feet in length. Incredible.
"See, that settles it. Porpoises are the natural enemies of sharks. A school surrounds nursing calves and will, on occasion, rupture an intruder by butting the offender's abdomen. We have no more reason to fear. Any shark is long gone."
Cliff, as if moved by the last events or his friend's logic, also appeared to have altered his position.
"See, that settles it. Porpoises are the natural enemies of sharks. A school surrounds nursing calves and will, on occasion, rupture an intruder by butting the offender's abdomen. ”

“ As a child, the house in its unkempt stage had made a lasting impression on me. Brooding, enormously lonesome, the derelict house slouched against a weathered fence in a loathsome fashion. Overcast skies or darkness gave it the appearance of containing as many goblins or trolls as fancy might see fit to inhabit, I thought of a magnificent set of ruins, something Hawthorne might have used for his Seven Gables or a nigh perfect setting for a decadent family in the throes of their own poverty--some chilling Gothic charmer! ”

“ Bewilderment with the natural world is the keynote here. For how many of us have wished, like the Indian, to clarify a particularly taxing bit of life--to elucidate its function into a more recognizable form? ”

“ He envisaged a future free of pool hall smells and the glandular malfunctioning of his predator owner. They say the stem of a pipe pressed against one's tongue for extended periods of time will cause aggravation, perhaps "malignant growths," worse yet, cancer. To Clarence, however, it was he who was sickened by the onrush of brown saliva and halitosis as his compulsive partner pressed his bones to an opened jaw. He felt like Cain and wished he could kill this man with the jawbone of his own ass. At the very least Clarence wanted to be something more than an after dinner pipe. ”

“ A primeval instinct beckons through time to the campfire. And I suppose a campfire logic might be said to exist in all of us. The thinking of things out carefully over a second and third cup of coffee, cautious self exploratory reasoning. Today, any job ad will still warn: "Only the aggressive with a proven trail record need apply." Myths and more myths, the saga makers are legends in their own time, recreating themselves shamelessly. ”

“ A cynic would have begged the hire of something illicit to summon numbers in that quantity. Old Meg let it be known it was something more profound than that. Her every manner convinced you comments as such were guilty of the grossest understatement.
Weird lights, barnyard animals could be seen in the house and a hulk of a rusted car in the debris of a lawn. She was a widow of 18 years with no one to call her home. To listen to the neighbours tell it, they were alarmed, best as they could recollect, when the old Ford lumbered toward town regular as ever each night at dusk. ”