At the Speed of Light There is Only Illumination: A Reappraisal of Marshall McLuhan

Wychewode Park

Wychewode Parke BRIAN FAWCETT C./1.PRELUDE TOACOMUS whereinthepoetshewssome attentions that Marshall McLuhan evidently didn't exercise much during his residence, and mayhaps other attentions he wasn't adequately aware of having. . .) #3 , (the house number) is of brass—probably from Thailand and of recent manufacture—fixed to a tree at the end of the driveway that overlooks a pond, which is older than the brass or the tree even though probably artificial, the possibly accidental product of road­building. At which road the pond ends, although its waters run beneath the road and likely straight into the storm sewers so as not to risk undermining valuable real estate when rains doth fall, This deducible because it rains on this day in earlyMay, not injurious to real estate rather a genteel making up of winter s statistical deficit and audible by harking at the storm sewer grate at the pond's southeast margin. Rain also slick on the fenced­in tennis court above the pond the well­maintained tarmac like green bottle glass (French wine, surely, over $20) 224 The McLuhan house as viewed from the pond's east side four stories of Tudor now gray plaster with a red roof, still a house where six children might grow up in privacy, and thoughts be thought and soothed by the Sylvan Orders beyond the unruly details and the rowdy facts of life in the retail zone; Two concrete urn planters (availableat Loblaws $59.50 last time I checked) stuffed with purple and orange pansies some cracko geneticist spent his life creating; Ratty Baltic ivy covering most of the south wall brick, no doubt emitting the distinct and slightly unpleasant aroma of acid as one passes, which I don't, or at least not closely enough to catch the scent or set off the alarm systems sure to be present to protect the current occupants' deep, deep privacy; Fake shutters on the house, brick red, nailed to the plaster to keep them flapping in the wind; On the pond a pair of Mallard ducks dabble in the brown scum— No, wait. These mallards are too large, which means they've probably crossbred with domestic whites and are famously aggressive toward com­ petitors; Across from the house a Norway maple leans against the mesh fence that keeps the riffraff from dabbling in the pond (and from being attacked by the crossbred ducks). This tree has been left to saglong enough that the trunk has grown over the fence rail; Two white hyacinth also noted, plus a single yellow daffodil and sprigs of ratty forsythia, blue periwinkle (the dog­tooth violets a week from blooming); Two planted weeping willows now decrepit with the virus urban conservationists say will kill them all (but which there is reason to suspect is as much an engineer s lie to rid the city sewers of their deepest­of­all roots); Above the pond another weeping willow (or cottonwood?) this time stone dead and incompetently hacked apart; Next door (north­west) a home under renovation, separated from #3 with orange plastic temp­fence, a Port­a­Potty in the back yard because a5 these are folks who don't like workmen pooping in their homes while bringing them into line with the 21st Century Joness; An older woman in a gold lame car coat, her too­heavy makeup giving her face a metallic glint, walking a dog that appears to be annealed with the same makeup, twin spray­painted iridescents of the tin woods­ man glaring "who are you?": unemphatic Intruder Alert;Intruder Alert; There are private property warnings everywhere you look in Wychewode Parke—as if visitors wont get the message anyway; Yet people live and breathe and die here, and the garbage collectors overturn gray plastic garbage cans in these driveways as if this were part of the real world. Which for Marshall McLuhan, it was the best of his last twelveyears. In those rare moments his mind dropped out of warp, respite from the Medium, And in the "wuh, wuh, wuh," of his last days, solace in the face of the Message. I imagine him glaring out the window just before his final sleep watching snowflakes atomizing on the pond's black surface thinking, The commercial inventory may not be thepoem, or some such ambiguous italic, in divisible and unspeakable. This page intentionally left blank ...