The Days: Forecasts, Warnings, Advice

By M.A.C. Farrant

It’s hard to worry about the future when you’re laughing at the hilarious absurdity of daily life. The days we live go by like slugs eating their way through leaves; everything changes, yet nothing changes, and the years soon accumulate. Who doesn’t read their daily horoscope, searching for guidance about what’s to come, how to live? What is life, but ordinary and special days, time passing, humour, sex, death, and love (making it all bearable)? All these are repeated gestures that run through The Days, a kind of absurdist guidebook made up of ninety unconventional, very short stories collected in three tight sections. This is fiction that thinks, fiction that cuts to the chase, told with Farrant’s trademark humour and acerbic wit. Her miniatures gracefully articulate the contemporary zeitgeist: anxiety about the future coupled with absurd mundanity. Somehow, always, Farrant captures the moments that buoy us up, crystallizing the experiences keeping us from being overwhelmed while calling our attention to overwhelming truths.

Let yourself be excited and delighted. Farrant’s artfully spare stories – averaging a couple of paragraphs each – offer enough food for thought (and mood) to keep you going for months. Dip in occasionally to be reminded of the strangeness of us, or read from beginning to end and immerse yourself in a slightly skewed version of reality – one in which people are frank and the world is unforgiving as it shimmers like light on water, sometimes blinding, always dazzling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Release date: Sep 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772010084

M.A.C. Farrant

M.A.C. Farrant is the author of seventeen works of fiction, prose poems, non-fiction, memoir, two plays, and over one hundred book reviews and essays for the Vancouver Sun and the Toronto Globe & Mail. Her memoir, My Turquoise Years, which she adapted for the stage, premiered in 2013 at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver. Her novel, The Strange Truth About Us – A Novel of Absence,” (Talon) was cited as a Best Fiction Book of 2012 by the Globe and Mail. The World Afloat (2014, Talon), the first in a trilogy of collections of miniature fiction and prose poems, won the Victoria Book Prize. One Good Thing—a living memoir, published by Talon Books in 2021, was a BC Bestseller. Forthcoming from Talon Books: Jigsaw—a puzzle in ninety-three-and-a-half pieces, (2023, NF); My Turquoise Years 20th Anniversary Edition (2024). Archived material is in the “Special Collections Branch” at the University of Victoria.

Book preview

1

Four-Day Forecast for Wendy

1

You have a keenness to never let your running mind rest. A keenness to be emotionally important.

You love dancing while wearing a bowtie and are not allergic to glee.

But you will never applaud a legend in the unmaking. Your dad, the retired banker, for one. His aging narrative has grown side effects.

Yesterday he was spotted exposing himself at a busy intersection while wearing see-through pantyhose beneath your mother’s curry-coloured coat. This caused mild excitement among passing motorists. The police were called. A witness described your dad as not having much to show for himself. He was quietly delivered home.

In light of all this, your becoming an astrophysicist doesn’t seem like such a big deal today.

2

Today you are in the Original Mystery business, a former bride hoping to penetrate the story, deliver the goods. Elements of a leaping terrier appear, and devoted goats, elephants, as well as flat, floating fish. A festival of washing dishes, cooking, hauling garbage, weeping, and laughing appear.

Mostly you are rushing from one beginning to another declaring, Doesn’t the world look stunning? It almost feels natural!

It’s hard to describe the look in your shiny chocolate eyes.

3

On this day you will mention to Gary, your husband of twenty-nine years, that you wouldn’t mind being your family’s head of state. You come from a long line of matriarchs, you’ll explain, and so your request is not an unreasonable one. Furthermore, you will say, The men in your family do not become heads of state, ever. They tend to drop back to their own devices and drink Scotch in the corner of the living room with the cat on their lap.

It will be late afternoon when you broach the subject with Gary. He will receive this as Good News! He’ll be in the garden shed smoking his daily joint. He’ll be sitting on the old white leather chair he dragged out there and he’ll be looking at you pleasantly. You, on the other hand, will be breathless. Nevertheless, you will tell him what’s on your mind.

Gary will be quiet for a long while after you speak. He’ll be staring at the dust on the shovel. Finally, he will say, If that’s what you want, Wendy … And grin.

4

Today your dog, which is wearing a red vinyl jacket and is tied to the boulevard tree outside the thrift store, will decide to end things. His name is Rusty, and suddenly, he feels like he’s dragging a rusty anchor.

This is because he now understands the truth of his situation: you don’t really love him. It’s what he’s suspected for some time – that, for you, being with him is like being in a prison. Because he, Rusty, is never going to grow up and go to school and get a job and support you later. That very quickly he’s going to become an old dog and possibly an expensive and cranky one.

When you come out of the thrift store he can read the truth in your eyes. Even though you say, Thank you so much for waiting for me, he knows it’s a lie. Your mind is elsewhere. You’d sooner walk by him and visit the cat in the pet shop down the street.

Every dog should have a boy instead of a fifty-six-year-old woman, he thinks.

This Year

– the dog will have six hundred friends

– almost everyone will lead a charmed life and spend it singing

– no one you love will get hurt, though some of us worn-old will disagree with this

– many will wear so much gold for good luck that no one will offer them guidance

– hair will be mostly styled for its hypnotic value

– everyone will follow forecasts, warnings, advice

– everyone will be part of the chorus, the ubiquitous hum

– everyone will plan to enjoy the next twenty-seven years

– everyone will get their picture taken with the President

Backup Chorus

– We are three nameless women harmonizing behind the male lead.

– Three TV goofs walking into walls with ladders.

– A quartet of optometrists singing Wait till the Sun Shines, Nellie on board the doomed flight in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five .

– A string trio covering Green Day over there by the subway exit.

– Five old women knitting together in a storefront to attract business.

– We are Janet saying to Elaine, I was beautiful once and everybody loved me.

The Cinderella Problem

You have a fondness for sweeping floors and raking leaves. You are happiest alone or when getting your hands dirty. You’ve often thought you’d make a good Cinderella. You like shoes and would consider a prince with a foot fetish as not a bad catch. You like a