Danusia and the brickworks

Kipling, who made comments about big guns and so many other politically inappropriate things it would be impossible to include them here, once visited Medicine Hat and declared that it had all hell for a basement.  It does have natural gas, and a flame is constantly lit in the coulees to mark the spot.  Some say it is a waste of gas, but at least you can actually tell the whisperer by his flame.  Harder to pin down is the wind.  In southern Alberta they say the cows sleep standing up because of the wind.  And you only know there isn't a breeze when you get bit by a sand fly.

Here I met Danusia, the daughter of Polish combatant, who, along with her childhood girlfriend Bogusia, sold Toni home perms and L'Oreal hair colour to fellow children of displaced persons, who cut hair and did it up just so in the Flats, where it flooded every Spring, or thereabouts.

Danka and Bugsy were married, as was the custom, to strapping Polish lads who worked at the IXL brickworks, where red biscuit brick didn't need to be coloured on account of the clay in Redcliff, which was also useful to Medicine Hat Pottery, who supplied the Titanic with Hycroft china,

and the province with American Standard toilets, ash trays and stone crocks,

and bean pots to Catelli and the French Canadians.

There's no way I could have made the cut at Medicine Hat Pottery--let alone IXL--on the basis of the kilns, which burned hotter than the natural gas.  And I wasn't in line for Danusia or Bogusia, as much as I liked visiting their cosmetics booth.  Some things were better enjoying, like the warmth from a fire, without stealing the ashes or cleaning the flue.  As Leonard Cohen said in an old NFB documentary that features him waking up in the morning, "Although only one man may be receiving  the favours of a woman, all men in her presence are warmed".

Such is the prodigious generosity of those who have felt loved--or at least not outright rejected--even from afar.

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned

Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them.
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.
Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.
And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

And finally I understand Giorgio di Cicco, who wrote "If men wore leaves, women would be beautiful at fifty [or sixty or more]".