June 01, 2004

LIVE MUSIC and LIVE BEAVER

Living in Kitchener has it's advantages - I am now much closer to the metropolis of Toronto and the endless stream of great bands and films which descend upon it.
In the past couple of months I have seen:

Sondre Lerche
The Walkmen
Joel Plaskett
Hawksley Workman

...and as I have mentioned earlier plans are in the works to see The Fiery Furnaces!

Kitchener has advantages I couldn't have imagined - surrounded by farmland and the wildlife that can survive in our shadow - I have seen animals I have never seen before outside a book, film, or TV. For example... beaver.
Alongside a trail in the touristy village of St. Jacobs runs a placid stream - it's milky green-tea water strewn with lost branches. This is where we saw the beaver... er, what we soon learned was a beaver. When we first spied it, we clutched at each other - watching it like some watch a stock car race waiting for that one spectacular crash - our mouths agape. Don't quote me on this but we likely murmured things like, 'Jesus Christ' or 'Holy s**t' and this was before it revealed itself to us - before it pulled it's shiny wet body onto the opposite bank. It was big. As it swam all it had revealed was a tiny head and the soft wake of it's thick black tail.

'What is that? A bear?'
Trying to convince myself it wasn't - it couldn't be - I replied, 'A dog I think... yeah, yeah, a dog' - I hoped.

Well, at least I can take comfort in the fact that I didn't think it was a bear.

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