Three Things from Edmonton -- Episode 117: Scrabble, colour, reading

 

Here are three things that left behind still discernible tracks of happiness and gratitude in the week that was. 

Three Things, episode 117, for the listening and sharing.  

                           

1. Scrabble 

My friend Rob is the craftiest Scrabble player I have ever tiled against. A man of letters, he is. A player with supreme control of his vowels. A champion of the game who will soften you up with a flurry of two-letter, three-way jabs before putting you to the canvas with a seven-letter bingo, or two. I had never beaten him. That’s not quite true. Years ago, I did prevail. Alas, that was the game, we were soon after to learn, that was played with a missing tile. So the triumph remained asterisked. Rob is the kind of Scrabbler who would play ISKED onto ASTER,  with the K on a triple letter. You get the picture of what it’s like to face him.

We met for lunch and a game at Bucas & Pastas, and, wonder of wonders, I won my first ever game against the master, even though he played BISQUES and ORZO. (I suspect he limited himself to words suggested by the menu, such is the higher plane he plays the game on.) 

From Rob, I have learned self-control. To me has been revealed the elegance of not playing a word to display vocabulary if that simply leaves a triple word play open. From Rob, I have learned, and learned again, a kind of playful Machiavellianism. Rob plays Scrabble like the philosopher who said fortune might well be the arbiter of half our actions, but she leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern. 

There is a harmony of chance and technique to his game. He displays a kind of equanimity in the face of letters chosen blindly. A higher kind of consonance is his style. Above all, he plays the game with a disinterested love of the game that means a well-played word is a well-played word, whoever plays it. The victory is playing the game.

2. Colour 

The propeller whipped the cream into little whitecaps in the mixing bowl. Shelagh was making dessert. The bicycle race from France was streaming on the computer that sat on a stool in the kitchen.  On the counter, kiwis, strawberries, oranges, raspberries and blueberries sat piled like gems in glass bowls. On the screen were the yellows, reds, pinks, blues, whites and oranges of the cycling jerseys in the peloton’s bouquet. The dessert was a fruit trifle. The race was the men’s Paris-Roubaix. At this time of year, the trees along the route are still leafless and the fields still brown and bare. Northern France in April is not Augusta National. This was the hell of the north, not the hello, friends, from the south. But what a spectacle the televised ribbon of colour that winds through the villages and flickers along the ancient roads was. The peloton was like a broadcast test pattern. Or the old CBC butterfly logo. 

The still-stark background of the countryside made the river of cycling tones more vivid and more precious, and as welcome as a colourful fruit trifle taking shape in a kitchen with a window on a thawing Edmonton on Easter morning. 

3. Reading 

There is a secret life to the service road along 142 Street in Valleyview that’s reflected in the pieces of broken mickey bottles often left scattered on the pavement. The shards of glass are easy enough to see ahead and pedal clear of except for the times they aren’t. Most times I am selfish enough to keep going, just happy to avoid a flat tire, file it all under I for inertia. Sometimes a quieter voice is heard, and I obey, stop, park my bicycle, go back and kick the glass bits to the curb. That’s what I was doing when Johnny Walker, as we call him, walked by. 
John is a fixture in the neighbourhood, and by fixture I mean someone who is always in motion, outside, walking at all hours, through all seasons and weathers, usually reading a library book as he goes. For years we have waved hello, but exchanged only a few words. He once explained that he has learned to see with his ears, while, eyes down reading, he walks the city. This time he stopped, nodded at my trace of public service and made an ingenious suggestion. Use a piece of spruce tree as a kind of whisk, he said, it’ll work better. Huh! The nearest spruce, as misfortune would have it, had a damaged branch from which I twisted free a length of needles, which, bent back on itself, did the job on the glass. 

By then, John was a couple of blocks down the street. As I passed him, I held out the makeshift broom and said thanks, that worked better. He waved back a “you’re welcome” as he walked and read on.