Chuck : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Chuck / runran
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | I met Chuck Dale three years ago at a blues festival in Calgary. Our bond was immediate and strong. What struck me first was how easily we managed to negotiate the common space between our merchant tents. Chuck was a veteran importer, a traveller, and a gypsy prince with a wicked sense of humour. We met the following year at the Pemberton Music Festival and again set up side-by-side. Finally, this year, we set up as neighbours at the Vancouver Folk Festival.The bond is impossible to explain. We should have been brothers. We worked and played together like grown children. He’d appear in our tent and make some odd comment and I’d offer him 20 bucks to fuck off. Then 40, 80, 100. Shoppers often didn’t know how to react to our kibitzing. Were we serious? What the hell were we talking about? I owed him thousands. Other times he’d simply appear beside me like a ghost. One time I told a security volunteer that a homeless person was harassing me. I described Chuck and she caught him lurking behind my tent. He never did pay me back for that prank.We had a thing about feather dusters. We offered patrons a light dusting with their purchases. Sometimes we’d walk from tent to tent among other merchants, dusting off their goods. We’d shake and twirl the dusters as if they were alive. We’d stand in threatening poses and brandish the dusters at each other like weapons. They became puppets and spoke to each other or to passers-by: “Never underestimate a feather duster.” At night, when the tent sides were closed, the dusters became shadow puppets and danced on the white walls.We were old souls who met on a long road. We shared an ancient way of life, bringing goods to market from far places. We both followed the Western Canadian street market and music festival circuits, our vans filled like caravans of old. Traces of merchants lie strewn throughout history. Much of what is known of the past is through the investigation of trade goods found in sunken ships or painted on the walls of ruined civilisations. People call us vendors, but vendors is such a weak word. We are merchants.Last I saw Chuck was at the Vancouver Folk Festival. The festival wouldn’t let us bring our vans on-site so we had to haul everything along a gravel walkway from a far parking lot. Chuck had a trailer full of goods and infrastructure, including 42 3ft X 6ft metal grids. After some discussion with a security person, Chuck was given permission to haul his trailer in by hand, a seemingly impossible task.But Chuck lifted the tongue of the trailer with a hand-dolly and five of us hauled and pushed the thing over a low rise and down to the west bazaar. The hand-dolly holding the trailer tongue was lifted and navigated by a short and muscular young man - Te, a friend from Thailand who called Chuck daddy. It was one of those physically impossible tasks people do to prove that they can do it. Four men and a girl - Chuck’s 20-year-old niece Sabrina was with us. Joggers, other merchants, Parks’ officers, festival volunteers – all were amazed.In the late evenings, after our tents were shut, several merchants sat together in a park near the Jericho Beach hostel. Sometimes Chuck and I would sit alone. We shared vignettes of our lives. Our laughter surprised us. People thought we’d known each other for ages. His import company was called Odyssey and, like Odysseus, Chuck had a unique resourcefulness. His occupations in life were various – auto-body-man, heavy equipment operator, mechanic. He had an extended family, the result of several relationships and the relationships of his partners, children and stepchildren, and countless uncles and aunts. He spoke of his father once, a terrible few moments. I forget what he told me. He’d like it that way.His feet were giving him trouble. He seemed more haggard than I remembered. But still strong and vibrant at times. All summer season long we had texted one another and were looking forward to being at the jazz festival in Kaslo together, all four of us, because my partner JoAnn and Chuck’s wife Darlene were fast friends. There is so much more to it. Really, but … Chuck took ill and died.I last spoke with him while at the Shambhala Music festival, my cell set on speakerphone and resting on a fencepost. Te was with me. Chuck was in the hospital. “You get better daddy,” said Te. “Come to Thailand and play your drum.”The service for Chuck Dale was held on an expansive property in an upscale neighbourhood in Maple Ridge, near Vancouver – Darlene’s sister’s place. I met most of the people Chuck had spoken about with love, bewilderment and humour. We shared such complexities. The yard and house were full of objects Chuck had imported over the years from South Asia - pottery and textiles on ledges and walls and up the winding staircase, a 10ft stone statue of Buddha in the yard, three wooden bird chimes hung around a circular section of the wide wood deck. This section was draped in white sheers. There stood a high table set with pictures of Chuck looking ever bit like a rock star.I arrived with a feather duster in the inside pocket of my suit jacket. I toyed with it during the service. Sabrina smiled at me through her tears. Friends and relatives took turns telling stories about Chuck, some vented their sorrow and broke into tears. His stepson Nathan wore a green straw fedora that Chuck loved, and which I had given him in Vancouver – the second of two identical green hats, actually, but that story must stay untold, filed under Chuck. A young woman sung Amazing Grace from the balcony off the master bedroom. Everyone sung the Bob Marley song, Three Little Birds.Chuck loved to play hand drums. He bought and sold them. It was his specialty. The service ended with a drum circle, Darlene played the mother beat. The service had started late and lasted longer than expected. Darlene’s sister stepped up the tempo on her drum and ended with a flourish, joined by maybe 8 or nine other drummers, louder and louder, faster and faster, and suddenly over.That instant Chuck’s cell rang. Darlene had been using it to field calls. “It’s his 5:50 PM wakeup call,” Darlene managed to tell us through her laughter and sobs. “He programmed it before he died.” We all glanced around. I fiddled with the feather duster, twirled it loosely, shook and ruffled it like a startled bird.Goodbye dear friend. Thanks for the call. The light feather dusting. |
| 撮影日 | 2008-07-29 18:36:08 |
| 撮影者 | runran |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | Mt Currie Indian Reserve 2, British Columbia, Canada 地図 |
| カメラ | QSS-32_33 , NORITSU KOKI |