John Terpstra Why Must We Die 1

Why Must We Die? by John Terpstra We are human, we are angel.                                         Kate and Anna McGarrigle Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.                                         Willa Cather         The side wall of a corner house.         A brick house. A parapet wall.         We were walking down the street. We were ambling through the neighbourhood, our physical environment of houses, sidewalks, roads, yards, gardens, trees.          We were keeping our heads down, talking. We were deeply involved in a number of events taking place in our lives.                  It was not a good time.         One of us said something. I looked up and saw the flat brick wall of the corner house staring me in the face from half a block away, thought grief-- and felt its heavy wave roll me over.         I did not at the time know the wall was called parapet. I did not know a wall could have a name.          Parapet walls extend above the roofline of a building. They are the interior, shared wall of a row house, or the same wall minus a house on one side, if it happens to be where the row ended. There are many of these exposed ends in our neighbourhood. Most of our rows are only two houses wide, and so the walls usually face the house next door rather than the street, but when the house sits on a corner, like this one, they are in full, public view, and they look something like stripped-down versions of house fronts along the canals in Amsterdam.         Normally that unadorned wall gives me pleasure. On this day it was something to drive into, to beat with closed fists, or bang a head against. Strangely, though, it was the wall itself which had seemed to prompt the wave that rolled over me when I looked up at it.         Has it ever been thus, and me not paying attention, or is my grief original? And if mine is not original, then how do people bear it?          How many of the people walking by this wall now are bearing it; how many who’ve walked by since it was built? How universal is this thing?          Walls talk. They speak in simple facts of brick and glass.          The facts of the parapet wall of the corner house include two, symmetrically-placed windows on the ground floor, each twice as high as they are wide; an identical, second-story window directly above the one on the left; and a pint-sized version of these three in the peak.         Brick-wise, every seventh course is laid with the narrow ends of the brick showing, which means that it is a tie-course, which tells us that the wall is double-brick; one wall inside the other, and is structural rather than decorative.    [  >>>>> FORWARD ]   Share | [Distillate © HA&L + John Terpstra  |  {from the Greek bios} - the course of a life.] [This article is sponsored by Wolsak & Wynn Publishers LTD., acknowledged with thanks by the Editor and Samizdat Press.]