a cat with no tail

A fat cat with no tail struts by my perch where I sit beside a pile of horseshoes collecting luck. I can hear someone playing banjo in a garage next door. 

The air is fresh, it rained but only a few hours passed. The dirt roads are wet and the potholes make small ponds with but the life of reflections. This city holds ghosts and what haunts me is their silence, their uncommunicable histories built on slanting foundations and abandonment.

The sky is fixed in a soft state. I like it here, a lot, and I think Dawson City wants me. 

The locals here speak of Dawson as if it were a person, a lover, a siren. She chooses, although some are dispelled, no one can freely leave, and if you do she'll always call to you.

"There isn't a day that goes by without me thinking of her”,

 was the response of an old man whose family had encouraged him to retire on the temperate coast of Vancouver Island. Although the coast was much more sympathetic than the extremes of the Yukon's seasons, Ray found no relief for he could never stop pleading to the lady of this town. 

Knowing of these spirits, I contain a cautionary happiness. I am cautious of the luck and love I find here, not just because of the Sirens but the absurd anxiety of the luck running dry because it seems all too good.

The tail-less cat walks by again. I wonder if he is considered mute or socially awkward in the cat kingdom. Perhaps his pronunciation is just poor; capable of feeble meows but failing in subtle inflections. How does he romance without his ambidextrous posterior?

Cat's without tails are definitely less sassy, more rodent-esque. However, I think you'd like this guy, I think you'd like Dawson too.

I got out of the city yesterday and went for a car ride with Dave. Green-mountain-awe. 

It's important to leave Dawson from time to time, for with distance you rejuvenate desire.

We visited an abandoned mine shaft, crawling inside to discover the cavity still frozen with wooden peg teeth protruding from its gaping jaws. I recognized that absent slack-jaw of abandonment; appearing to have aged in waiting.

 Ageing is different than waiting although they can appear to have the same effects, the latter can wrinkle time.

Ghosts have a hard time here, the never-night of summer makes for challenging haunts. The sun hangs in the sky for three months, relentless, exhausting shadows and disorienting the morning birds and nocturnal creatures. Darkness is illusion's ally, where uncertainty prevails and secrecy can find ease. With sun-shy ghosts making way for new fears, what concerns me is the great reveal; the raw exposure of the endless day that bleaches out photographs- distorting history and erasing mystery.

The cabin I'm living in, 'the hobo mansion', has seen its share of transient phantoms. Decades of stories and scandals imprint the sedimentary pastel paint that flakes off the walls of my bedroom; mint and frail pink. There is no electricity but the sun is never cut off and we get water from a huge vat that is delivered from time to time.

I'm living with a printmaker named Rebekah, a bearded fellow named Ian and a sheepdog named Walter. Our little home sits on the edge of the famous Bonanza creek, the source that sprung the 'gold rush'. There is a big garden and so many flower beds waiting for seeds. 

I want to plant peas, carrots, arugula and rosemary. I want to write at my window, I want to read and feel the goodness of simply sitting in the quiet, with the company of tired ghosts, needing nothing and waiting for but plants to grow.

Wanting and waiting