Photograph © Brian Michael Barbeito

An owl heard but never seen, a town with a clock that keeps no time, and the question of how long a place takes to acquire a character of its own.

Prose and photograph by Brian Michael Barbeito

At first there was the noticeable sound of the hoot owl, and it was mysterious even in the diurnal hours since it was distant and unknown, like part of a soundtrack in the background. I began to like to hear it and imagine its life. Maybe it lived by the long path that bordered the back of the farmlands, the one with the gravel path that turned to sand, the one that in part was framed by sumac with its year around red main part and seasonal green tropical-looking leaves. Yes, sometimes there was a dragonfly around there, and nearly always the sound of something or other was in the branches.

Life went on outside of the forest. The long roads became busier, and the housing construction, the developments full of the new suburbs, really began to grow and grow. Fair enough. What can you do? — I guess people need places to live, and the world market and economy is beyond all of us. Joseph Campbell, the great American mythologist, author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, said somewhere, “Don’t try to fix the world just try and fix your own life.” The pigeons hang around the movie house and the puddles below, and sometimes the clouds in the beyond from that area look magical against the calm demeanour and countenance of the summer dusk skies.

I went to get a coffee and there was a man studying his Bible, which was nice — making notes, and another that complained about the service and took up much time. The space was large though, and the caffeine great! It really set off one right again and even helped inspire thoughts about writing and photography. It was also quite interesting to listen to the tarot readers, for they were believed in — but if not, even the psychology of it, meaning in this case, what readers thought about group dynamics, toxic personalities, narcissism, empaths, healers, life paths, numbers, austerity and abundance, phases and cycles on the journey, the fool’s journey from naïveté to the world, finally, to wisdom!

Plazas prosaic, sometimes clean, and sometimes littered those days with too much garbage and debris. Seagulls and crows watching. The faux clock of the town that didn’t actually keep time. The trees not big enough, not having the true years yet to grow. The people judging each other, many surface level but some with a bit of depth (few and far between though). Judgemental eyes, grey yuck problematic hearts and minds. But some nicer, purer, more grounded, reasonable, and real. An urban architect or city planner or sociologist somewhere a long time ago mentioned that a place needs generations to really develop character. The markets. The churches. The people. The roads. The restaurants and bookstores and the rest. To just make a faux clock and some strands of houses, did not normally make for true character.

But as I went by the Terra cotta stones, the clematis upon wrought iron trellis tall, the small tomato plants and basket of million bells, dusk and some rains were coming. I paused. I stood still for a long moment as I had heard the hoot owl again. And the sound I loved, a symbol and sign of mystery and something different in the world — somehow more universal, cosmic, and transcendent.

Something somehow hopeful sounding…

About the author

Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian poet and photographer residing in the Southern Ontario area.