I WANDERED BACK to Jasper Avenue, my mood expectant yet wary. The sky’s flush of light disturbed me somehow; it was like the colour coming back to the cheeks of Lazarus. And – deny it if you will – there’s always a Lazarian quality to a morning rush hour. How many of these ordinary Edmontonians that I now passed, who now passed me, were Buster Keaton heading to the film set in 1920? How many were Philip Larkin heading to the main library at Hull University in 1964?
The curious truth is most people must work for a living, yet we live in a culture that celebrates only the escape from work. The way most of us spend our lives is scorned and dismissed. Is it any wonder, then, that we should rise as if from the dead to take up our toil? Why, even the desire to work harder has negative connotati
