(After Allen Ginsberg)

I’ve seen the best minds of my nephew’s generation commandeered by mammon and its

handmaiden, technology—deflected, distracted, diverted, obsessed and consumed—

breathing shallowly, sweating heavily and squinting endlessly into pale blue screen

light. And I despair.

I imagine them texting feverishly in their cold beds at midnight and again in their warm

ones at dawn.

I have heard and seen them muttering and messaging while leaning in doorways, in banks,

bars, churches and synagogues—their anxious expressions and clenched buttocks i

indelible in my memory and profane in my sight.

I have listened to their murmurs. I have watched their thumbs dance nimbly across small,

spectral screens at dinner parties and cello recitals, baptisms and AGMs, first

communions, bat mitzvahs, bar mitzvahs, securities commission press conferences,

birthdays, weddings, private placement closings, wakes and funerals.

I have seen them hunched over their hand-held devices, waiting irritably in lineups to pay

for truffles at Urban Fare and brandade at Meinhardt, and in longer ones to see K-OS

at the Commodore and Mark Farina at the Imperial.

And I have endured viewings upon viewings of their cheesy, selfie-stick autoritratti taken at

seven-day all-inclusives in Lahaina, Cancun and Antigua.

I have variously seen and heard them hard at it while riding in taxis, waiting for taxis and

complaining bitterly of the shortage of bloody taxis;

while squatting on toilets at the Bay closing real estate deals, and squatting in loose

Burberry chinos lining up challenging putts at the Point Grey, Capilano and McCleery

golf courses;

while waiting for Helijets, boarding Helijets, disembarking from Helijets and grabbing the

National Post or Business in Vancouver to read on Helijets;

while waiting for their personal shoppers at Holt Renfrew to return their calls and for Food

Bank cold-callers to finish their pitches and shut the fuck up;

while racing their fast German cars through the Massey Tunnel before sunrise, weaving

bleary-eyed from one northbound lane to the other, choking down cold, drive-thru

breakfast food;

while clattering down moonlit Georgia Street sidewalks in Fendi shoes, panicky late for

conference calls scheduled in Eastern Standard Time by thirty-something, Manhattan merchant banker keeners;

while sitting opposite their wives or husbands or partners or lovers waiting impatiently for

pasta dishes to touch down on red-chequered tablecloths at Ask for Luigi, Tavola,

Cioppino, Bibo and Campagnolo; and

while taking instructions, placing orders, giving instructions, taking orders, taking advice,

giving advice, making bucks, passing bucks and passing wind discreetly in sleek and

crowded, cologne-fugged Vancouver office-tower elevators.

I sometimes hear my nephew’s whispered but still throaty day-trading “Yes!” when I feign

sleep in my spartan though tasteful palliative care room overlooking the North Shore

mountains. I squint now through barely open eyelids at him seated at the end of my

bed—anxiously pecking, tapping, swiping and scrolling...

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