Difficult Music

I spend every day at work writing about the virtues of properly grounding your equipment, then I get a shock off the doorknob when I leave in the evening. Never fails.

The roads that ring Burnaby Mountain are nice. I like their curves and the way they’re cut into the hillsides. On my way home, I walk to a bus stop near a downhill S-bend. There’s a grass bank on the outside of the curve with one of those homemade roadside memorials atop it. It’s a very humble memorial—just a couple tattered fabric violets and a small wooden plaque that reads “OMAR 1982–2000.”

I don’t know who Omar was. He might have been a kid with a fast car; he might have been an old alsatian that crossed the road at the wrong moment. I only know that a life ended on that corner.

I think Omar was a person because of the speed bumps at the entrance and exit of the S-bend. Maybe a SFU roadworks crew put them there in response to the accident a couple years ago. They wouldn't do that if only a dog was killed.

The speed bumps are broad and shallow, though, and the cars barely slow down.

NP: Opeth Deliverance (godly)