Sibum and Ormsby have proposed I revisit my Canadian roots and, in all solemnity, suggest that were I to shake the earth from them I might find there some possibility of growth for the future. Ormsby, in particular, is fascinated by the small town of Kemptville, which he believes is my birthplace. A couple of years ago, at the local filling station there, he spotted a female attendant with gold bangles, whose hair grows blonder, her legs longer with every retelling, such that by now she must straddle much of the northern hemisphere. There is, I believe, such a figure but she is visible only to wayfarers in extremis, usually before they sink beneath the waves. Ormsby, having spotted his siren, smells the possibility of epic and because his appetite is immense, and his talent too, I have offered up the town to him, to do with as he likes. A while ago, it slipped into an impolite verse of his. Actually, and I am sorry to disappoint him, I grew up twelve miles away from Kemptville, which, given the social and mental divide between farm boy and town boy, is a considerable distance. I grew upon a dirt road called Jig Street, which in spring is often impassable. This fact alone speaks volumes. I've become so easily stuck in this prose. There is a problem here, and it is not that I have become such a stranger to this area of my life but rather that I ...