︱tape: 03 - skateboarders off markville mall︱

sitting on the benches of markville mall, you could really become invisible. everyone’s off in their own rush among the folded shirts and gift shops where an arm might bump into a purse and the two people might whisper their apologies among the faces of happy people on posters for a sale or the images on walled partitions of a shop under renovation: their source of happiness inaccessible as those enlarged faces smile on us wandering up and down the concourse, erected by scaffolds and grimy pillars that create decrepit rooms of unshaven wood floors under a pathetic light bulb, all that behind those untarnished grins.

pazzo and i were wasting our time here because my dad kicked us out of the auto repair shop from across the street. we wander into random stores examining various products before heading off elsewhere within the mall almost looking for a special something off aisles or display windows. we had watched my dad service cars that came in and out of the garage. searching through the undersides, he urged our attention to his movements of his gloved hands around the ashen chassis finding transmissions, radiators and drive-shafts, these names would echo through my mind failing to materialize when i would struggle to recall them when he would ask so i only nodded to each brusque question of whether i understood. if we were so good at memorizing television shows could we instantly know this? i only remembered tv show tunes because they repeated and those forgotten lyrics might come back after each replay. but today, he must have sensed the mechanism of my nods simply to continue what he was saying. i didn’t think it took him this long to see through my repetitions. so, i just sit here to watch the crowds sail by.

i always have a recurring dream of watching the clouds drift by in a meadow with faceless sunflowers, petals are painted in strokes of yellow and then i opened my eyes to a standstill ceiling where it seemed like time didn’t move except for the puddle of sunlight on my wall leaking from my shutters. i sat with some friends who were coming to terms with some heart wrenching stuff, tears flowing over times about when they got bullied or were made fun of; i was never good at these confessions so i went with telling a moment where i almost fought with a somewhat disagreeable classmate that conjured no recurrent pain aching at my cheeks. it’s not like anyone will still feel this way. it elicits nothing more than a breath that fades into silence waiting for the next person to share. they even talked about crazy dreams where dinosaurs would walk out of ambulances and take them to the hospital. i could only remember a dream where one of my teachers held me back after school lecturing me about my grades. suffice to say, a mediocre daydream. nonetheless, i was always exempt from the laughter that rang afterwards at lunchtime which made their stories all the more like an appearance like watching the teary break-ups in romance movies and i, watching these half-felt partings wither to the continuing afternoon or perhaps i was like them too putting on appearances when some people kept prodding me to share some kind of story, something perhaps more painful or only mustering an awkward chuckle when someone wants to show some meme compilation of people falling over to popular songs. i was told that no matter what, people thought the same things which failed to conjure any relief or reaction, thinking it horribly vain to match my own tics and worries into the passing silhouettes in crowds or other people, perfect mirrors unrestrained by mimicry wandering into other houses, into that life bursting with things to do and places to go that i couldn’t be a part of with no one to give me that look that would include my presence within their gaieties, leaving only a droning reverberation exciting my ears to the giggles of school-children or veiled invitations of shy paramores by school-gates, prompting in me a dull ache with an image of wasting away, of replayed songs coming to their end, of wasted days burning through the shutters charring shapes into room corners.

i have dinner with my family while the news on the chinese channel fairchild television plays in the background to the din of chopsticks clicking together. my cantonese isn’t very good so the string of political happenings, murders, and car accidents only comes to me in fragments.

“car accident...5 wounded…steeles and dufferin….”

i passed some gailan vegetables to my father and he only grunts in thanks.

“where did you go today, ah-kin?” my mom asked. my chinese name, ho siu kin, which can be transliterated into rarely seen.

“i just hung out with pazzo at markville,”

“oh you weren’t helping your father at the garage?”

“i was but we finished early.” i lie.

my father said nothing and my mother took our word for it. i finish eating and head upstairs a little bedraggled, still hearing the happenings downstairs: the sink running, my dad making crude jokes, all these movements and voices bouncing off the walls and i wonder if they might break through and i would be able to see all these scenes and movements in full but only sharper. i was never good with arguments and normally i wouldn’t say anything and the other guy would just give up eventually but i had the impression that they were trying to show me something that had otherwise eluded me but i would always return to that world of subdued noises without clear shape almost melding into an ambient wave resounding before falling back to walls lit in cerulean from skies or electric lights.

after school, i go with pazzo to see a group of his friends at a skatepark outside the community centre off mccowan road, the houses congregated around the sidestreet to tall apartment condos down the road, those gardens we once passed by now mapped on balcony grids with potted plants hanging from railings as if they picked the flowers from the ground and were now sitting up in those baskets, preserving them amidst the afternoons. the friends babble on, legs dangling off the concrete pool, with arguments i barely follow about what strategy was best to use in super smash brothers.