Lie Lashes

            I didn’t go to the food bank on Saturday because I wanted to work on my English paper, but I didn’t get started on it until the late afternoon. Still, if I had gone to the food bank I would have spent the rest of the day writing about it so it did benefit my essay not to go. I copied ideas into the text from my hand written notes until I reached the seven page limit, then I read it through and edited out the superfluous stuff to make room for more jotted thoughts. By the end of the day there were still another twenty-one pages left to copy and less than three full days left to finish the paper.

            Because I didn’t ride down to the food bank I also didn’t go to the supermarket, even though I was out of fruit, except for canned peaches. Next Wednesday is the beginning of my annual fast and I need to finish up all the meat that I have. So for dinner I pulled out the two tubes of ground meat (one of beef and one of pork) from the food bank that I’d had in the freezer for a while. I steamed them till they were thawed and then made a chilli with onions, cayenne, paprika and some dried chilli pepper flakes. It turned out pretty good.

            Less than half an hour before the liquor store closes it occurred to me that I hadn’t bought my Saturday and Sunday cans of Creemore, so I rushed out, only to find that they were out of Creemore until Monday. That hasn’t happened for years in my experience. I asked one of the liquor store staff for the recommendation of a Creemore equivalent but he didn’t know. He asked a colleague, who said any lager would be comparable. That’s not true, but there was no time, so I bought two cans of Mill St. Organic Lager. It was okay, but it wasn’t as good as Creemore.

            A woman ahead of me had false eyelashes that could have used as weapons. There’s a super power you don’t see. A person could shoot their eyelashes like porcupine quills or rockets, or they could be so long and razor sharp they could cut someone’s throat or each lash could be a stretching tendril with a deadly grip or each one could be a little viper.

            I watched a couple of episodes of “Leave It to Beaver”, one of which brought back memories from my own adolescence.  In the story, some of Wally’s friends had begun to shave once a month and so he was jealous and borrowed his father’s safety razor so he could tell them that he was shaving too. His father found out though because he had so many cuts on his face when he went down to dinner. It reminded me of when I borrowed my father’s electric razor. I don’t know exactly how he found out but my father was insanely meticulous and it would have been almost impossible to put anything of his back exactly the way he’d left it. Maybe he saw blonde whiskers that didn’t match his black ones. Anyway, he wasn’t mad, as I recall, but somewhat amused. On my next birthday he bought me my own electric razor.

Elitist Poet Like Me

            On Friday I finished making hand written notes for my essay and started typing them into the paper, editing as I went. With four days to go before the deadline I was certainly ahead of the game compared to the last two essays I’ve worked on for Canadian Poetry, but this one was going to be more difficult because I would be critiquing a poet that my professor likes a lot. On Wednesday evening I had sent him a first draft of the first half of my argument and on Friday he responded. Here is some of what he said:
            “You write well and forcefully, but I feel that your best point is the last, at the bottom of page 4: (Perhaps Jones’s writing is not intended to be poetry or the poetic aspect of her writing is secondary for her. She wants her compositions to convey politically important information. It can be argued that Jones simplifies her message to reach a disenfranchised audience that has been denied education, but there is nothing in Compton’s tribute to Poitier that grade school students could not understand. “To Poitier” is a relatively uncomplicated poem and yet it also has depth that is fortified by metaphor. It not only sheds light on the significance of an African American icon, but it also shows that poetry works better when it is used as more than a blunt object but as a tool that the audience can use as well. Creativity is at least as liberating as being inspired by a hero and Compton offers both in this poem. The impressive collection of facts that Jones presents about Paul Robeson can be gained from other sources than her poem while Compton’s insights into Poitier are unique.) The rest of your argument falls into an age-old division between poetry of purpose and poetry of aestheticism (art-for-art’s-sake), an argument that is often wielded to ‘shut down’ politically motivated poets as being propagandists as opposed to being artists. In the end, this devolves into a matter of opinion. I ask you to consider how your viewpoint aligns with the classic, Canadian bias in favour of ‘elitism’, ‘aestheticism’ and an Ivory Tower – orientation as opposed to making space for poetry that is directed to the masses, that is populist in register. I love Wayde’s work – and I love the fact that my own work has inspired his (as he has acknowledged) but I also love Jones’s work -- for the power of those rhymes (often) and images – especially when they are recited aloud. You quote Jones’s (weak – maybe) rhymes without taking into account the investment of her poetic in song – which often employs ‘fake’ or ‘weak’ rhymes. In a sense, you are arguing the difference between Bob Dylan and T. S. Eliot, when maybe the real difference is between the ‘public address’ of song and the interiority of (print oriented) poetry. 
            “Your argument is forceful, opinionated but – for me – not convincing, for it does not ponder deeply enough deeply enough the potential power of Jones’s ‘public address’, which I have had the benefit of witnessing. I also would hope that you would consider demonstrably stronger work by her before casting her aside too easily. If you want to check out an academic argument in favour of ‘public poetry’, ‘populist poetry’, see N. C. Press’s ‘The Poetry of the Canadian People’, which is a 1970s, Marxist-inspired, collection of union songs, work songs, ballads, etc. The US academic Cary Nelson published a volume on this question back in 1992. 
            “Your opinion is very clear, but it does not, for the most part, advance beyond ‘opinion’. I’d still give you a good mark, for you write and reason well, but I’m not sure that your opinion advances much beyond an anti-populist, anti utilitarian bias.”
            Yikes! I knew that putting my argument across to George Elliot Clarke was going to be a hard sell, but he really drove that point home a lot harder. I don’t think that he understands what I’m getting at, but I’m glad he pointed out where he thinks the holes are so that I can try to make my meaning clearer to him. He seems to think that my argument is against simplicity. I’m fine with simple, but simple needs to be deep and unique. It may be nearly impossible to convince him, but I’m gonna give it the old college try.

Performance

 

       

            I spent most of Thursday getting caught up on my journal about what happened on Wednesday. When I was writing about how I'd quoted some verses by "The Last Poets" to George Elliot Clarke and him telling me about the movie “Poetic Justice”, which also guest starred "The Last Poets", I decided to download “Poetic Justice”; “The Last Poets’ eponymous album from 1970 and the soundtrack to the great film “Performance” starring Mick Jagger.
            The dishevelled middle-aged woman with the curly hair who panhandles outside my window was taking advantage of the warmer weather by not bundling up in her winter coat. The coat is so new and white that she looks much more down and out without it, though didn’t notice a single person give her anything in the five minutes while I was watching. She was speaking about herself as she begged but it was as the autobiographical data was only half directed at those from whom she was asking alms. She said things like, “I’m a mother! I got a fourteen year old! I gave birth to a healthy baby boy! I’m a mother! I don’t wanna bother anybody!”
            I made a pretty good hash for dinner out of onions, ground chicken, potatoes and gravy. I ate it while watching Leave It To Beaver. One episode was interesting because it had Eddie Haskell do something uncharacteristically honourable. He came by the Cleaver house to tell them that he had a girlfriend and asked Wally if he wanted to meet her. He took him to a big house in the rich part of town but Eddie didn’t ring the bell. They were about to leave when a woman opened the door and guessed they were there to see her daughter Caroline and so she invited them in. Caroline didn’t know Eddie any more than she did Wally but she liked Wally a lot. Later she called Wally with the intention of asking him to take her to the dance but he felt uncomfortable talking to the person that Eddie had claimed was his girl so he cut the conversation short. Caroline’s mother called June to arrange for Wally to take her daughter to the dance. Wally was upset because he thought she was his best friend’s girl. Eddie came over pretending to have a sore throat and asked Wally to take Caroline to the dance for him because he knew he wouldn’t take her without his consent, so he did. So Eddie was sort of being a nice guy for once even though he was still lying about Caroline being his girl.
            As I was washing the dishes I looked out my side window and saw a guy that I recognized from the food bank line-up. He was storming drunk and angry across O’Hara towards another guy and confronted him. The guy was not very responsive. He started walking up the street but the drunken guy charged and grabbed him again. Then a friend of the drunken guy crossed the street to talk to him and another man came from around the corner and they were all talked for a minute until the drunken guy put his arms around the guy he’d confronted and gently kissed him on the cheek. Then they both walked up O’Hara together.

Isadora Duncan

            On Wednesday afternoon I had an appointment with my Canadian Poetry professor, George Elliot Clarke. I printed up four pages of the rough draft of the first half of my essay to show to him and slipped it between the pages of the notebook where I’d handwritten several pages of notes towards the second half of the paper, then put it into my backpack. I got ready to go, but when I was prepared to leave I had a little time and decided to pull my notebook back out to count how many pages my hand had written. It was about twenty-five. I put my notebook back in my pack and headed for St George and Bloor.        
            As I started rolling I realized that it was a very warm day and that I was wearing too many cold weather accessories. When I stopped at the Brock and Dundas light I removed my gloves and quickly shoved them into my backpack. I also untied the scarf that I wear on the outside of my hoody and was just undoing the long scarf that I wrap around my neck on the inside when the light changed. As I crossed Dundas, one end of the long scarf was dangling dangerously close to my spokes. Not wanting to somewhat re-enact the death of Isadora Duncan, I pulled it up with my left hand and held it until I got to the other side, then I stopped at the corner and put the scarf into my pack.        
            I got to the Jackman Humanities Building with plenty of time but I went up to the eighth floor anyway, and after using the washroom, I found George’s office. I could hear his voice waxing loudly on some topic relating medieval literature and politics, so it was obvious that he was talking to another student. While I was waiting it suddenly occurred to me that I had removed my essay from my notebook before counting the pages and I didn’t remember putting it back. I checked and saw that I had indeed forgotten the paper, but I wasn’t very upset about it. I was fairly confident that I could give George an outline of what I had in mind without him reading it. Plus I could always email the draft to him afterwards.
            He went overtime with the other student by a few minutes and then poked his head out the door to see if I was there. I didn’t recognize the tall and pretty young woman that left his office so maybe she was a student in his African Canadian Poetry course. I guess I knew that it was okay to come in but I knocked anyway. George’s office looks like an overstuffed little library. He apologized for running past our appointment start time but explained to me that he had arrived a little late. He said that we could go a little past 16:30 to make up for it.       
            I started giving him an outline of my essay.  He liked that I picked two thematically similar poems each from El Jones and Wayde Compton to compare, but we almost immediately began to argue (in a friendly way, of course) about my claim that Compton’s approach is better than Jones’s. He once again asserted that Jones is aiming her poetic message at a less academically sophisticated audience, which often consists of prisoners. I offered the possibility that maybe prison assemblies are a lot smarter than she thinks they are and that maybe she’s talking down to them. I contended also that if a prison crowd really does require a more straightforward message, that Compton’s “To Poitier” for example is just as simple as Jones’s “Paul Robeson”, it’s just more artfully written.
            Still thinking that it was easy access for the listener that I was disputing, George brought up the name of a group of African American poets that were well known in the Black literary community in the 60s and 70s but not very much on the radar of White writers. I think that he was surprised enough that I knew who “The Last Poets” were, let alone that I was immediately able to start reciting their lyrics: “Night descends / as the sun’s light ends / and black comes back / to blend again”. His point was that their verses are easily accessible, while mine was that there is more than that involved that sets their poetry above that of Jones. There’s smoothness, a lack of awkwardness and a lovingly crafted presentation. I figured that since I had already set him aback by quoting “The Last Poets”, I might as well throw in another stanza: “Sippin on a menthol cigarette round midnight / rappin about how the Big Apple is out’a sight / You aint never had a bite! / Who you foolin? / Me? You?” He told me that he was impressed by my ability to quote them. I confessed that I was especially familiar with that piece because I had the soundtrack to the film “Performance”, starring Mick Jagger. He mentioned that The Last Poets are also featured in the movie “Poetic Justice” with Janet Jackson in the lead role.  My point in quoting them was to show that they exactly illustrate my point, which isn’t an extolment of complexity but of depth and of an ability to turn a phrase creatively that I think is less strong in the work of El Jones than in that of The Last Poets and Wayde Compton.
            As promised, George went past 16:30 with me and when we were finished he insisted that I could not leave until a tradition was fulfilled that has been going on for years. He told me that no student has ever left his office without the gift of a book. He explained that he still gets sent books all the time for him to review, even though he has long stopped reviewing books. He tore open a manila shipping envelope and pulled out a volume of poems to hand to me called “Disturbing the Buddha” by Barry Dempster. Then he drew it back and said he’d better not give that one to me because it might be an important title. From the same envelope, because they were mailed together from Brick Books he dug out one that he didn’t mind handing over. This was a play called “Après Satie” by Dean Steadman. I would have preferred the “Disturbing the Buddha” title that he’d almost given me, but I hadn’t expected to receive anything and if I really want the other I can get it myself. It was funny though to have George ungive me a book before giving me one and that moment was probably more memorable than the book he gave me even if I actually ever read it.       
            After unlocking my bike I decided to raise my seat a little more because I think it hasn’t been quite as high as the seat on the Phoenix. I fumbled a bit with my chain after wrapping it around the seat post and trying to lock it, when it slipped out of my hands, causing the padlock to fly into the middle of the sidewalk.
            I rode east to the Remenyi House of Music to buy a couple of guitar strings. There always seems to be three times more staff than customers but I guess if they sell one piano they pay everybody’s wages for a week and everything else is just gravy.

Tony Dow

            On Tuesday, since it wa reading week and I didn’t have to go to class, I spent several hours making notes toward my upcoming essay for my Canadian Poetry course. There are so many things to research in two of the poems I’m looking at, especially in Wayde Compton’s “Declaration of the Halfrican Nation”, that I’ve spent weeks just on the notes. It’s due in one week, so I guess I still have lots of time. I am almost finished with the hand written notes, but then I’ll have to transcribe them, condense them and arrange the whole thing into an academic paper.            
            I watched the first episode of the second season of Leave It To Beaver. Beaver had to write a poem for school and so he asked his father for help. Ward got Beaver to pick his own subject, which was bears, but then the kid couldn’t think of anything to write, so Ward wrote the poem for him. It doesn’t seem to me that it would be difficult to coax a poem out of any kid. The best way to start a poem is just to write down the first thing that you think about the topic, like for instance bears. That would almost always automatically lead to another thought. The first things you write down don’t have to be in verse form. That could come in the second draft.
            I’ve read that Tony Dow, the actor that played Beaver’s brother Wally grew up to be a renowned sculptor and visual effects artist for film and television. 

Riding a Saw

            On Monday morning I woke up at 4:51, got up to pee and was back in bed by 4:52. Over the next ten minutes I dreamed that my late bike mechanic Agostino Logiudice, who committed suicide about two and a half years ago, was still alive. In the dream he was still Sicilian but he was also an orthodox Jew. The shop he had didn’t look the same as Mojo Cycles, though it was about the same size. It had a lot of three tier metal filing cabinets on top of which were displayed the covers for movies that he also rented in this shop. The video covers all seemed to have pictures of guys that looked a lot like Chico Marx, wearing similar hats to his as well. But all of the Chicos were statues in plaster with their bodies fitted impossibly into urn planters with very narrow waists. The actors all had expressions on their faces depicting bemused mock surprise. I had brought the bike I am riding right now for him to have a look at. It wasn’t really malfunctioning but I complained to him that it was slow.  He fiddled around with it a bit but then concluded that what I should be riding was a saw. He indicated a long handsaw that was lying on the floor just to my left underneath a bit of shop debris. I looked at it and tried to figure out how I could possibly ride something like that. He went to do something over by some of the filing cabinets and I got up to protest, “Why are you recommending saws for people to ride when this is a bike shop?” Then I woke up at 5:02.            
            My guitar tuner has been losing its juice very gradually over the last month, but since it’s been dark when I start practising I’ve been able to still see the note display, plus my guitar hasn’t been going out of tune very often lately. On Monday morning though it was brighter outside and earlier than usual, plus the humidity was messing with my strings and so they were going out of tune to an abnormal degree. On top of that it happened when I was a little ahead of schedule but because of all the tuning I fell a little behind. I decided that this was the day I’d have to go down the street to buy another CR2032 battery, but I noticed that I only had $1.90. I didn’t want to ride to the bank, so I thought it might be a good day to cash in all of my beer cans. I gathered them up into two bags and carted them on each handlebar of my bike to the Beer Store. As I approached what used to be called the Brewers Retail I noticed that it was mysteriously quiet. When I got there I saw that it was closed and then I felt stupid because I’d forgotten that it was Family Day. I had to take all the cans home and then ride to the bank machine at King and Dufferin after all.         
            I tend to buy my tuner batteries at Young’s Fine Food Convenience at West Lodge and Queen. The woman behind the counter seemed like she was in a bad mood. The got pissed off at the hump backed elderly gentleman ahead of me because he didn’t like the scratch card that she’d handed him and asked for a different one. She complied, but exclaimed, “They’re the same! You’re funny!” She didn’t seem to appreciate either the fact that after buying the battery I ripped open the cover to test it in my tuner. It’s not like anyone was waiting behind me.

Mating Calls in Traffic

            On Sunday morning it was relatively warm outside for February but the heat was still on in my place, so I had to open all of my windows. The day before that was also warm and so someone in the building had propped open the back door with the old bungee cord that I’d hung out there for that purpose. The only problem with the deck door being open this time of year is that it blows cool air towards the thermostat in the hall, thus causing the heat to come on and so then it would be even hotter in my apartment.

            Later on that afternoon as Parkdale was out and about enjoying the springlike temperatures, I heard the mating calls of the traffic birds lilting in through my open window. The ladybird sang, “Watch where you’re goin you fuckin goof!” to which the gentleman bird sweetly responded: “Maybe you should learn how to drive, lady!” Ahh, spring is in the air!

            I watched two episodes of “Leave It To Beaver”. In one of them, Wally got the idea that he wanted to go to military school until Eddie Haskell planted the notion in his head that his father had subtly tricked him into wanting to go just to get rid of him. Eddie declared, “I’m thirteen years old, but I know the law and my dad can’t kick me out of the house till I’m twenty-one!”

Food Bank Line-up Replaces UN! World Problems Solved!

            Saturday was a relatively warm day for February and so the layer of ice that coats the driveway behind the food bank was visibly melting along its sunny edges. The sweaty thaw though only served to make the walking surface in the middle even more slippery. There were a couple of guys standing on the sidewalk at the entrance when I turned my bike off the street. They had seen me coming and had moved without realizing they had stepped into the only clear way in, so they had to move again. “I didn’t know which way you were gonna swing!” one of them said to me. I chuckled and asked them if they were the last ones in line. The short man with the extended gut pointed to the young couple standing in line. It seems I am always either just behind or just ahead of those two. They seem a little out of place at the food bank and look almost middle class. They are clean cut, neatly dressed, and though they are not unfriendly they do not interact with any of the clients unless spoken to. They stand in their place in line and chat amicably and quietly with one another until the line starts to move. I stood not far away from their position and began to take out some books so I could take notes on a couple of poems for an essay that is due on February 28^th.

            A short and very friendly Latino in his 30s arrived and asked me who to stand behind. I informed him that was me and so he told me I was the boss. A gentleman in his 40s wearing a baseball came after him and we pointed out his position to him. I was about to start reading when the man in the cap started telling me that the Parkdale Food Bank is the most bullshit food bank in the city. He asserted that all of the volunteers take the highest quality food and leave the rest to us rats. He assured me that he knows because he has volunteered there but then said that they have asked him to work there but he’s turned them down. He claimed that he was there now in secret to observe and then report on them. He told me that his motto is “look and learn” and that he goes to places like prison in order to understand them better. He declared that prison life is extremely comfortable, with free health care, three good meals a day, clean clothes and a big screen TV. He alleged that it costs the government $100,000 a year to pay for each prisoner. He added that he knows poor people in Parkdale who commit crimes just so they can get off the street. Using the example of Paul Bernardo he maintained that the convicted serial killer has a great life in prison in Canada but in a third world country they would have been smart enough to put a bullet in his head to keep him from draining the system. I asked him, “If prison is so great, why aren’t you there right now?” He answered that he would be like a caged bird. I argued, “Right, so then it’s a punishment to have to go there.” I challenged that it doesn’t seem like a very sweet life to me to be told when to get up and when to go to bed and to not be able to leave. He started describing further the details of life in a penitentiary that served more to support my argument than his, such as all the work that inmates have to do and he internal politics and violence that they have to deal with. It really sounded like sufficient punishment to me.

            As far as the cost of maintaining each prisoner is concerned. Considering that I live on $10,000 a year, $100,000 for each prisoner seems unnaturally high. When I looked it up later I found that he was right about the cost for each prisoner but that is in a minimum-security prison. The cost for each convict in a maximum-security facility is about $60,000 higher. Since I doubt if it costs more to maintain the health and sustenance of the more dangerous prisoners, I can only conclude that most of the large maintenance expenditure for each prisoner goes toward security, plus the wages, uniforms, equipment, insurance policies, health plans and other benefits for the prison guards, maintenance staff, office workers and administration, including the salary of the warden. Even the government run prisons in Canada sell things that are produced by prisoners, so I wonder if they subtract their profit from the cost of the upkeep of the inmates or if they leave that figure out in order to argue for more funding. I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual basic cost of maintaining the well-being of a prisoner is closer to between $20,000 and $30,000 a year after all the other costs are deducted.

            My line-up companion in the baseball cap went on to recount how he used to go dancing with Jennifer Dale. Then he assured me that he wasn’t bragging but he also danced with Kirstie Alley at the Ranch Relaxo when she was an alcoholic. He commented that she’s as tall as me. He said Whoopi Goldberg was also there because they were making a movie together and she’s not as tall as I think. I never thought that Goldberg was tall. I can’t find any evidence that Kirstie Alley and Whoopi Goldberg have ever made a film together. As far as I can uncover, Alley never was an alcoholic but she was addicted to cocaine in the late 70s. So if she was an addict when he met her, my friend with the baseball cap would have been in his 20s, since he told me he’s now 55. He insisted that he is older than I think. He looked about 55 to me.

            Our conversation moved to Donald Trump, or as he called him, “That dumbass down in the States!” He mentioned that a lot of Americans are coming to Canada as refugees, but I corrected him that most of them are not US citizens. I pointed out that if people apply for refugee status in the States and then try to do the same in Canada we automatically reject them. But there’s a loophole that allows refugees that do not register in the States but cross the border illegally to apply for refugee status in Canada. He said he knew that.

            I offered my view that Trump is showing signs that he is heading for a mental breakdown. He laughed and inserted that he’d had a little one the day before during his press conference. He said something about Trump never having to really work and that’s when a tall guy in sunglasses piped in. He said he didn’t understand why poor people always say that the rich don’t work hard and challenged, “How did make his money if he didn’t work hard for it?” I argued that he’s a billionaire because his father was a billionaire. I see upon later research that Fred Trump merely a multi-millionaire in his time but his worth was his generation’s equivalent of a few billion. But clearly Donald Trump was advantaged by being the son of a wealthy man and Trump’s most successful ventures have also been in real estate like that of his father, suggesting that he didn’t have to work from scratch.

            I contended that it’s not really that hard to make a lot of money in this world if you have no scruples and you don’t care about what you do to other people. An elderly woman from the West Indies who was standing nearby exclaimed, “That’s right! But they won’t be happy in the end with what they have!” I was about to counter that plenty of bad people that get wealthy on the suffering of others live very satisfied lives, but then the guy in the sunglasses interjected that he wanted to be rich and he didn’t care what he had to do to get that way.

            Our food bank United Nations assembly moved its discussion to the Middle East. The man in the sunglasses insisted that the United States is going to eventually drop a nuclear bomb on one of the Islamic countries. The guy in the baseball cap demanded to know why he would want them to do that. I interjected that he didn’t mean that he wants it to happen but that he thinks that’s where things are headed. I contended that no one would ever use atomic weapons again for anything other than a threat because the result is too horrible. The man behind the guy in the sunglasses nodded and said, “Women and children!” I reasoned that the best the west can do in the Middle East is to let the other Islamic countries deal with ISIS and stay out of it. The man in the sunglasses pointed at me and nodded. He posited that the Qu’ran and the Bible are the same but the guy in the cap said they are not. He informed us that he is a Muslim from British Guyana and that there is a big difference between the Qu’ran and the Bible in that the Bible was written by many people while the Qu’ran was scribed by one man. He did admit that the two books have the same meaning though, at which point the man in the sunglasses extended his arm to offer his hand but the guy in the cap dramatically refused. The man in the sunglasses pulled his arm slowly back and shook his head in disbelief. I was too curious not to ask, “Why didn’t you want to shake his hand?” He returned, “Because it’s a cop out!” There’s a late 60s and early 70s expression that one doesn’t hear very often these days. I got him to clarify that he meant that he never shakes hands with anybody. He opined that it’s too easy and presented us with his alternative, which is to put his hands together in the prayer position against his chest and to bow slightly. That actually seems like more of a cop out to me, and a pretentious one at that. Later I tried to see if not shaking hands was a Guyanese thing, but in fact handshaking is very common there. They do apparently value highly their personal space though they are conversationally blunt.

            The line began to move, and shortly after the first ten people had been let in, an elderly Tibetan woman came out and made her way across the ice with the help of the wheel-less front part of her two-wheeled shopping cart.

            When I was finally the first person in line, the doorman, Danny was talking with the friendly Latino behind me, who it turned out hadn’t been there in a long time. In answer to a question about how he’s been, Danny confessed that he gets into a lot of trouble around the food bank because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I told him that he was misunderstanding the expression and that “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” means that unless you complain about a problem, the problem will not be addressed. He nodded politely, but I don’t think he got the point.

            I got number 38, which seemed excessively high, and went home for about half an hour. When I got back I asked the inseparable couple if they’d started calling numbers yet. She said she thought they’d called 5 but he corrected that they were up to 10. One of the guys who’d been earlier working reception came out and asked for numbers 11 to 16, but no one came forward. He tried out numbers 17 to 21 and one person made their way inside. He assured everybody that was waiting he’d be right back and closed the door. I noticed there were people in the driveway with numbers up into the 90s and that there seemed to be more addicts among the group than usual. One woman in particular was horribly emaciated.

            The door guy kept calling out sets of five but only a few trickled in. I heard mention of some numbers being missing at the food bank end, which would explain why I had ended up with 38. It didn’t take long before I was inside even though the shopping helpers had yet to call for number 25. As the seats to my right cleared, the receptionist asked me to move down, but I said I wasn’t going to because people could easily fill up the seats on either side of me. He surprised me by not arguing with me and admitted that he thought that it was a dumb rule too and why would they think that people were so stupid that they didn’t know how to find an empty seat. He told me that he didn’t make the rules.

            My helper was a bored looking guy who after calling my number barely spoke to me at all. He would just move down, look at me and gesture with his hand toward each shelf.

            Behind all the cake mixes on top of the first set of shelves I found a package of buttermilk biscuit mix. The middle part was empty and at the bottom where there are usually lots of granola or energy bars there were noting but little packs of stacked taco bowls. I took one, but I think it was mostly because I felt I should get something.

            I skipped the pasta, rice and sauce shelves. The shelves that usually have the canned beans and vegetables only had a few cans of beans and I didn’t want any.

            The soup section had a variety of canned and boxed soups, so I took a box of organic chicken broth. From the next set of shelves I took a can of Knorr powdered chicken broth. From the bottom he gave me another bottle of Aveeno shampoo, of which I have four now, plus two of conditioner. From the final shelves he offered me a big bag of generic multicoloured sugared kids cereal, but I turned it down.

            From Angie’s cold section I got the usual half-liter of 2% milk. Next I had a choice between frozen ham slices, hot dogs or sausages, so I selected the ham. Then she put her hand on a tube of Pillsbury croissants and asked, “Are you baking?” I nodded and answered, “Sometimes.” She put it in my bag and said, “When you’re not reading.”

            There was not much in the bread section, but to be social I asked the bread lady for some raising bread. After a bit of searching she surprised me with the only loaf with raisins that she had.

            There was surprisingly little in the vegetable section as well. I commented, “It’s really thin today!” She shrugged and responded, “What can you do?” She gave me a few potatoes and onions but there was a box of something I’d never seen at the food bank before: dragon fruit. She said she would dig down to try to find me a good one. It turned out to be alarmingly soft on the outside, but it was fine once those parts were cut away.

            I left the food bank with a lot less in my bag than usual. I went straight to the supermarket to balance out the meat, fruit and cereal situation. I got grapes and chicken drumsticks, plus Freshco had packs of ground chicken on sale for $3.00. Bran flakes were also on sale for $3.00. The cashier with the box braids was not very friendly and often isn’t though she sometimes is so I like her. She indifferently handed me my change and then just turned to indifferently serve the next customer. At least it wasn’t me.

            That afternoon I took a siesta and so I guess that’s why I didn’t hear the blast two blocks away that sent two people to the hospital across the street from the Parkdale Public School where my daughter was in grade two. I was disappointed that I hadn't heard it, but explosions never listen to me.

            

Mona Leonardo

            On Thursday afternoon I did the second half of a two-week pose for Bob Berger at OCADU. He was telling the class that someone has a theory that the Mona Lisa was actually Leonardo Da Vinci in drag. She has superimposed a Da Vinci self-portrait over the Mona Lisa and supposedly it fits perfectly. I don’t know. In my experience as a model, I find that even very good painters often unconsciously make me look like them.

            He talked of a modern master who refuses to take on students that have not traveled for two years beforehand. One of Bob’s students exclaimed, “That’s so unfair!”

            After class I was chatting with Bob when one student on her way out the door said to me, “Thank you for posing!” I said, “You’re welcome!” She was almost out but then she opened the door again to tell me, “You have a really nice nose for drawing!”

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought Clementines, grapes, bread, apple turnovers, cheese, flavoured and plain yogourt, margarine, and canned peaches. Male cashiers are very rare in supermarkets. I’ve seen a couple at Freshco but there’s one guy named Jeremiah who is often working there when I shop. He’s much more personable than the most of the female checkout people but in addition to actually being actually friendly, his face seems to be structured in such a way that it looks kind of frozen into a permanent Mona Lisa smile.

            That night the singing guy passed my window, this time doing a very strong version of “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley.

            Friday was an uneventful day. I stayed at home and got caught up on my journal entries. Then I got back to making notes for my Canadian Poetry essay.

            There’s a reference in El Jones’s poem, “Light Skinned Girl” to how “Beyoncé dances at the front and the dark girls dance behind”. I assume she means in the Destiny’s Child era and she’s obviously implying that Beyoncé is more successful than the others because of her lighter skin tone. I wonder if it’s true. I guess it could be. I know that Beyoncé’s father micromanaged the group right down to the choreography though and it wouldn’t be surprising that a father would want his daughter out in front. But in terms of crowd appeal Beyoncé’s lighter skin could very well have given her a larger fan base.

             

High School Dance Band

            It seems to be on the coldest mornings that it’s extra hot in my apartment because it just causes the thermostat in the hallway to jack the heat up higher. I think that even opening the window above the radiator just blows the rising hot air deeper into my place.

            Since Wednesday was the fifteenth I had to send in my income report to Social Services, so I went onto the OCADU website and printed up my pay statement. It’s nice that the site has gotten rid of most of its glitches, though it still temporarily registers an error after I log in and I always have to confirm that I’m an employee rather than a student.

            At around midday I headed out to the bank. There was a three-person line-up and a bicycle crowded around the Bank of Montreal ATM so I waited outside on the sidewalk for the space to clear up. Some people spend a lot of time doing all of their deposits and withdrawals at the machines when there is no line-up inside of the bank where there’s a free teller waiting who can do it for them twice as fast. There was this one guy that seemed to be doing just that. He kind of looked like the rickety old girl’s bike in the entryway was his but when he finally left the bike was still there. The woman with the big dog jumping happily up at her was next, but she didn’t take as long. The bike wasn’t hers either. The last woman didn’t look like the bike was a match for her either and it wasn’t. I came in and leaned my bike against the machine just as a guy that was moving like he perhaps had Parkinson’s disease came out of the bank and got his bike. He warned me to watch my back as he did a u-turn to get out. I guess having a bike with no crossbar is easier to get onto for someone with movement issues.

            I could have used a couple of things at the supermarket but they weren’t necessities, so I just stopped at the liquor store to get my Wednesday can of beer and went home, to work on updating my journal.

            I watched an episode of Leave It To Beaver in which a girl that is attracted to Wally uses a fake friendship with Beaver to manipulate a get together with Wally so she can get him to ask her to the school dance. The weird thing is that Beaver’s mother approves of the manipulation because trickery is the only way that girls can get the attention of boys. No girl ever tried to pull any strings to get with me in high school. I asked two girls to school dances twice when I was a teenager. The first time the girl from one grade up accepted my request a month before the dance. The thing was though that I was too shy to talk to her at school so I never approached her or called her at all as the event approached. So when I finally called her to make arrangements to escort her she told me she’d already made plans with someone else. For another dance I asked Leanne Forsythe, a girl in my grade ten class, if she would go with me and she said that she would. When I mentioned it a day or so before she said, “Oh! I thought you were kidding!”

            I remember the band that played most of our school dances was The Common People. They did mostly Creedence Clearwater revival covers but they also did Yellow River by Christie, which I was very fond of at the time and quite a few other popular tunes. I discovered online that they are still together. 

Black Rose

After work on Tuesday morning I went home for a few hours, took a siesta for an hour and a half and then headed for class. I didn’t have to use my bike flashers all the way downtown and I could still see pink on the horizon as I was locking my bike in front of University College at 17:30.

I used my laptop to finish my journal entry for the previous day, and then I ate five cheese sticks and continued making hand written notes for my essay. When Zack arrived, remembering him mentioning that he’d visited Turkey, I asked if he’d ever come across an area called “Halfeti’ but he hadn’t. I wondered if he’d learned any Kurdish. He explained that he’d hardly talked to anyone when he was there because it was Ramadan and he didn’t want to piss anybody off. George arrived as Zack as I told Zack that I’d seen a YouTube video of a guy getting punched out by someone for smoking a cigarette during Ramadan. George suggested jokingly that it must have been the brand. Zack joined in that one wouldn’t want to be caught smoking Marlboros in Camel country.

George called out to everyone, “Welcome to Valentines Day!” and then commented that spring was just around the corner. He recounted for us how on the Thursday before he had participated in two literary events: one on ethics and Leonard Cohen and another a celebration of the life of the late Austin Clarke. He noted that it turns out coincidentally that both Cohen and Clarke were born in 1934.

George gave us his itinerary for the next little while: that he would be flying to various engagements in different parts of Nova Scotia and back and forth to Ottawa for other events, including an Ottawa poetry slam. I asked if he would be a contestant or a judge and the slam and he said that of course he would be a judge since he wouldn’t dare to compete with slam poets because they are just too good.

Our book of study for this class was Wayde Compton’s “Performance Bond”. Compton’s approach to writing poetry is intellectual and encyclopedic, with a focus on the ABCs of ABCs. That is the documentation of the realities, the history and identity of Afro British Columbians. He is currently a professor of creative writing at Simon Fraser University. His first book of poetry was called “49^th Parallel Song”. In “Performance Bond”, in addition to his own work, Compton adds other people’s texts about their histories as Afro British Columbians because they help to justify his on presence. In addition to being a teacher and a writer, Compton is also a club DJ. The book blends his poetry in print with an added CD so we can hear him performing some of the material.

The title of “Performance Bond” comes from the judicial phrase “Appearance Bond” that someone signs to prove that they are responsible enough not to have to remain in police custody by promising to pay a certain amount of money if they do not show up in court. It is deliberate that the word “bond” has various other meanings such as to be shackled, one’s word being one’s bond and high quality writing or printing paper. Everything in the book has double and triple meanings. A case in point was “Stations”, the first poem from the book that we looked at. Stations can refer to Stations of the Cross and there are different ways of using the word “cross”. Compton himself is a cross breed but “cross” may also refer to crossing over. Stations could also refer to stations on the Underground Railroad.

George told us that Compton’s birth mother was White and his birth father was Black, but they put him up for adoption. However, the couple that adopted and raised him were of the exact same racial mix as his birth parents. So his two sets of parents mirrored one another. The mirror appears a lot in Compton’s poetry, indicating likenesses, representation and appearance. The word “surface” is also repeated a lot in this book.

George took a moment to announce that he has recently become a proud landowner in Nova Scotia. He told us that he needs peasants to work his three-quarters of an acre lot and so he would consider applications first from his students.

Compton is very hip, avant-garde, political and interested in exploring and experimenting with racial codings and the melding of language with objects, sounds, music and places.

“Performance Bond” is dedicated to Rosemary Brown and Ted Joans, both of whom died in 2003. Brown was a British Columbin community activist, the first Black woman to be elected to a Canadian provincial legislature and the first woman to ever run for leadership of the NDP. Joans was a Beat writer, jazz poet and surrealist whose work was a precursor to the spoken word movement, though he did not like the competitive aspect of slam poetry.

George announced that on March 9 he would be recording a song in Ottawa. Knowing that he has declared emphatically in the past that he can’t sing, I asked him if he would be singing. He laughed dismissively and affirmed that he would be reading.

Some of Compton’s poems look at borders and so George talked a bit about the fact that Canada is more edgy about borders in many ways than the United States. We have a very selective immigration policy. We targeted Chinese immigrants because we wanted them to build our railroad; we let in Eastern Europeans in the early 20^th Century because it was determined that they would be a good fit to contribute to our agricultural production in the prairies; and now we have special categories for immigrants who can start businessesbecause we are elitists.

Canada has had anti Jewish, anti Asian and anti Black laws. British Columbia passed laws to impede Asians from voting in 1872 because some communities had a Chinese majority. Between 1999 and 2001 a group of Chinese were trying to reach the west coast in leaky boats. The Canadian Navy was sent to intercept them. Out of a few hundred, only a handful of children got to stay. In 1987 South Asians came ashore. Again the navy was called and Parliament was even recalled.

“Declaration of the Halfrican Nation” was first published in 1996.

Somehow the subject of wormwood and absinthe came up. I missed the thread that led to it. George pointed out that it's dangerous but widely available in Quebec.

In the recent refugee crisis, Canada has accepted 56,000 last year while United States has only let in 5,000 even though it’s partially the fault of the United States that the crisis occurred in the first place. It’s an inconvenient truth.

The poem begins with the word “hazel” written as if it were a person’s name but with a small “h”. It refers to the colour. In between as an identity. Passing for Black or White. The line “What is Britannia to me?” is a reference to the line “What is Africa to me?” from “Heritage Poem” by Countee Cullen.

What does it mean to be a “British” Columbian? We forget that the Canadian constitution of 1867 says that we have to advance the interests of the British Empire.

There is a reference to Frantz Fanon’s ghost. Fanon wrote “Black Skin, White Masks” about how Blacks have to behave as if they are White in order to function is the White world.

Of how to make hazel definitive, George suggests that all mixed race people should be included as Metis, since Metis means “mixed”.

I pointed out that in several places in the poem Compton forces the reader to experience halfness by splitting up words at the end of a line so they have to be finished on the next. I also indicated that he peppers the piece with words that mean “half” in various contexts such as: semi; co; side and entre. Then I shared the results of some research that I’d done on the black rose, through which I found that the blackest rose in the world is in a place in Turkey called “Halfeti”, the name of which was originally in Kurdish, “Xelfeti” and which was made from a combination of the names of two lovers: “Xel” and “Feti”. Their legend seems to be an ancient Romeo and Juliette story about a couple that because their families could only be united in death.

We looked at a poem that begins with the line, “Lyrical / Prosaic”. The first half consists of various similar opposite sets of words, then changes to a list of words and mean “mixed” and ends with the line, “Those who have no history are doomed”.

Another poem begins with the line, “Chinese Columbia” then each subsequent line lists a different ethnic group that lives on the west coast and puts “Columbia” after each one. At the end of the list is “British Columbia /  whose motto /  Splendor Sine Occasu … can be translated myriad ways …” The translation is basically “Shining without a sunset.” But Compton gives his own at the end as, “Scintillation without perimeter”.

George said that there have been no treaties between Natives and the British Columbia government until recently. My research shows that the first one was in 1850, but maybe he means a fair one where the details weren’t written in later.

We looked at the poem “Afro-Saxon”. George explained that elite Blacks identified themselves with that term.

Compton is mixing elements of popular culture as a means of interrogating commentaries on authenticity just like he mixes beats as a DJ.

His poem, “Jinx” has words or lines intermixed with non-letter symbols. It contains a joke about the Rosetta stone and the genetic code. There is no genetic code.

George announced that we would be taking a break, but first we would look at “Christian’s favourite poem from the book, ‘To Poitier’” I’d thought that he was going to ask me to read it but he read it himself. In fact, except for the first poem, George read all of the ones that we looked at in this book, even though he usually asks for volunteers. In the poem, Compton credits Poitier, through his role in “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?” with bringing mixed couples like Compton’s own parents together and he thanks him, with love.

During the break I asked George if I could have an appointment with him to discuss my essay. He told me to email my request, I guess because it would be easier to access his calendar in front of his computer.

He bragged that has been keeping a New Years resolution that he made in 2011. I asked what the promise was and he answered that he committed himself to leaving Canada once a month. I asked what motivated him to make such a resolution and he responded, “Harper!”

I asked George if as the poet laureate of Canada there’s an apartment for him in Ottawa. He said there isn’t but he stays in hotels and it comes out of his Library of Parliament budget.

I had thought that the Parliamentary Poet Laureate was an appointment but George revealed that he’d had to apply for the position. This is in contrast to his earlier tenure as the poet laureate of Toronto, which he hadn’t asked for. He said he was very surprised when he got the call to tell him that he was Toronto’s poet laureate.

After the break we looked at the poem, “The Essential Charley Pride”, which is another of my favourites. It begins, “There is a church of John Coltrane / Charley Pride is a heretic …” George mentioned Coltrane’s composition, “Naima”. The next two lines are “There is a Funkadelic Parliament /Charley Pride is Guy Fawkes …” This distracted George into talking about George Clinton and Funkadelic. He described Funkadelic as “acid rock with a Black accent” and told us about 1979’s “Chocolate City”, which is a rap about the first Black president. George recounted how when they were teenagers in Nova Scotia, on Saturday nights he and his brother used to turn the television to “Cousin Stacy’s Country Jamboree” which he said was a horrible amateur night with bad musicians and singers. But what they liked to do was to turn the sound down and watch the video while playing Funkadelic.

Charley Pride “endured the denigration from both sides.” A synonym for “denigration” is “blackening”. “Directing him every which way but home.” Is a reference to the Clint Eastwood movie, “Every Which Way But Loose”. “You have crossed over” is one of the many references to Robert Johnson who, as legend tells the story, received the inspiration for the Blues from the Devil when he sold his soul to him at a crossroads.

With Compton you get more than you expect.

From the poem, “Performance Bond” – “ … Those who don’t remember / repeat …” is a reference to the famous quote from Santayana. The line - “BC is not the sum of its exclusions / or the complexion of its successes …” is a play on one Martin Luther King’s statements. The poem is about the performance failure of British Columbia. “Does Emery Barnes’s body jogging through the streets of Beijing / signify “BC” less than WAC anywhere, anytime?” George asked us if we knew who Emery Barnes was. No one had an answer. “It’s Black history month!” he chastised. He informed us that Emery Barnes was the speaker of the British Columbia legislature and the first Black speaker of any provincial legislature in Canada. WAC refers to W. A. C. Bennett or “wacky Bennett”. Bennett was the 25^th premier of British Columbia and he held office for twenty years. “The Komagatamaru moves through law and Latin / to terra sine occasu …” This is a reference to the shipload of South Asians that came to just off the coast of British Columbia in 1914. There was no legal reason to refuse them, but William Lyon McKenzie King, probably upon the advice of his dog, found a loophole that allowed him to turn the 376 Punjabis away. During his twenty-two years in office, King also refused Jews, interned Japanese Canadians and said nice things about Hitler.

George said that the Japanese were our allies in World War I and the Japanese navy would regularly patrol the coast of British Columbia to protect it.

George announced that he agrees with Justin Trudeau that our electoral system is perfect the way it is.

“Epicanthal Japanese vessels in Steveston” Steveston was a Japanese Canadian town, the population of which shrunk considerably during the Japanese internment.

Compton moves seamlessly from hip talk to politics. “Youth its own ethnicity.” The poem reminds George of T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” because of its modulation of voices.

George said that the small “l” liberal dream is the acceptance of equality. Racism is not the problem but rather empowered racism and that of all “isms” is the problem. He said he didn’t want to go so far as to say that the current United States president is autocratic.

Brown versus the Topeka Board of Education was the case that allowed the United States Supreme Court decision to kill segregation.

He talked of gerrymandering, which is to redraw electoral boundaries in order to exclude certain people from participating in the electoral process.

One poem is a copy of a cheque from Wayde Compton made out to Papas Labas, who is voodoo priest from the novel “Mumbo Jumbo” by Ishmael Reed. On the memo line is written, “So I may pass through” or cross over.

One poem has two lines – “This is what it sounds like when pigeons cry / homeward.” George said we should think of pidgin English.

Another poem has three words: “ailing” then the word “water” is repeated 72 times and “spirits” is repeated 13 times. George said it is reminiscent of “Zong”, which is a concrete poem by Philip Norbese.

As we were packing up, Zack announced happily that he was one of the seven accepted into the Creative Writing Masters program. George told him that he helped create that program and that it is because of him that seven people are admitted instead of six. Zack went in the other direction while George and I went out the side door. He told me about one of the other founders of the program who had been dismissed because of sexual harassment allegations without even having a chance to be questioned on the issue. It reminded me of the whole Greg Frankson thing from a couple of years ago. George said that another faculty member had to resign because he knew something about the disappearance of native women that he couldn’t devulge.

             

Conspyramids

            On Tuesday morning I worked at OCADU for an instructor that I’ve known since the early 80s when I first started modeling. I think that Marie Charbonneau was in her twenties when I first met her but since she had prematurely grey hair, she doesn’t look much older now than she did back then.

She had her back turned when I walked into the classroom as she was engaged in writing on the blackboard her usually meticulous outline of the day’s itinerary. I walked up behind, put my hand on her shoulder and said, “Hi Marie!” She turned around, recognized me and gave me a big hug. I think that’s the first time in thirty years of working as a model that I’ve ever been hugged by an instructor in my place of work. I wonder if she would have hugged me if I hadn’t first made body contact with her by touching her shoulder but had only walked up and said “Hi Maria!”

I did a set of two minute poses for her class, followed by fives, then tens, then fifteens and then finally a twenty. On my short and long breaks I made notes on a comparison of two poems by El Jones and Wayde Compton for my upcoming English essay. One piece is “Light Skinned Girl” by Jones and the other is “Declaration of the Halfrican Nation” by Compton. Jones tries to show what it was like to have been the darkest skinned girl in grade school by describing how wicked sisters and witches are described in fairy tales. I don’t think either of these types of characters tends to be presented as darker than the heroine. Witches in particular come to mind as being white haired and pale skinned. Compton, on the other hand, makes the reader experience halfness by splitting words up at the end of a line so that it is not complete until the next. He also throws in various words that are synonyms for “half” or “halved” such as “co”, “side” and “entre”.

At the end of class Maria asked me what I’ve been up to and so I told her about taking Canadian Poetry with George Elliot Clarke and working on a manuscript of poems for his class for the end of the term. That led to her telling me about a project called “Atlantis Rising” that she is working on that contains her paintings plus some of her own creative writing. She said it was inspired by William Blake and what she has read about Atlantis, which she is convinced was a real place. She told me that they have discovered pyramids by satellite deep under the melting ice in Antarctica, which is where she thinks Atlantis was. She went on to talk about the Nazis having been very interested in Antarctica and also recounted an apparently recent story of a forbidden zone at the south pole over which planes are forbidden to fly but that one pilot disobeyed that order and lost control of his craft. I think the skepticism might have been visible on my face. She said something else about a pyramid recently having been uncovered in Indonesia that they’d thought at first to have been a buried mountain.

            A quick search shows that the “pyramids” that Marie thinks are in Antarctica are actually mountains that happen to be shaped like pyramids if viewed from certain angles. The Matterhorn in Switzerland and another mountain in Iceland are also pyramidlike in a similar way. As far as a no fly zone over the South Pole is concerned, there may be a research area where scientists want to keep their signals clean and so they don’t want planes flying overhead. I couldn’t find anything about a plane mysteriously losing control over its instruments and going down. There are also conspiracy theories about Nazis in Antarctica to the point of them building a fortress and forming alliances the extraterrestrial aliens that had a base there. The fact is that Antarctica was sort of like an early 20^th Century equivalent to the space race. Germany was one of the many countries interested in exploring the area and one German expedition just happened to go there during the Nazi regime. Germany actually lost interest in the South Pole after the war, probably for economic reasons and so Norway took over the study of New Swabia. Finally, the Indonesian “pyramid” is so far only a speculation based on studies with electronic signals projected under an ancient site where real artifacts of a Neolithic community have been found. One researcher and his team claim that there is a structure beneath the site with smooth walls and large chambers. Other scientists are skeptical that it’s actually a man made structure. The president of Thailand has put funding behind the pyramid team, but then again, he also gave $1.2 million to someone that claimed he’d developed a method of turning water into fuel but after getting the money he disappeared. I had no idea that Marie was into that kind of Von Daniken stuff.

Wax Removal

            The streets on Monday morning looked like a sidewalk sale of white entrails. Winter had given birth overnight but she had eaten her young before morning. Guts had been thrown up in piles on the corners and intestines were stretched along the edges of the road in sloppy order for sale. From the sight of her effluvial offspring though it was clear that winter does not watch what she eats.

            Later that morning I watched the first installment of the new season of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight”. It was hilarious. They’ve decided that since Donald Trump only gets his information from certain cable news networks that in order to expose him to the actual truth they will be running commercials on those channels to let him know about the things he is ignorant of such as what is the nuclear triad and what is his youngest daughter’s name.

Every couple of months or so my ears, especially my left one, get plugged up with wax. It didn't start until I was in my thirties and I had to go to my doctor to get my ears flushed out. He just told me that on some people the ear canals get narrower when they get older. For years I went to him every now and then for syringing until about ten years ago I finally asked him if there was something that I could do on my own. I don't know why he didn't tell me in the first place that I could buy a rubber bulb syringe from some drug stores. I took his advice and it was one of the best purchases I have ever made.  The only problem at first was an ear infection that I got after the first few times I'd used the bulb, but when Dr. Shechtman was treating that he advised me to boil the rubber syringe before I used it. Since then I've had no problem, except for having destroyed a bulb while sterilizing it because I'd forgotten that I'd left it on the stove. I had to buy another, which I've had ever since.

On Monday my ears had gotten to the point where my left ear felt numb when it was resting on my pillow, so that meant it was time to flush it again. There were lots in there and some in the right. Afterward though the left one still felt plugged, but after one more try it was clear. I think it was an air bubble left over from the first flushing.

The Strap

            When I looked out the window on Sunday morning Queen Street was like a donut dusted with confectioners sugar and the only sign of traffic was the tracks left by a car that had done a perfect u-turn.

            I spent a few hours working on my Canadian Poetry essay, which will be due in sixteen days. I got four pages of a first draft written, so I guess I’m ahead of the game this time compared to my last two papers but then again this one might be more ambitious, plus I’m being very critical of a poet that my professor likes a lot.

            It snowed most of the day and so I was glad that I didn’t have to ride my bike anywhere.

            I watched a couple of episodes of Leave It To Beaver. Although it is implied that Ward Cleaver has resorted to corporal punishment in the past, he is always shown in the presented situations as wanting to be above that kind of punishment. Ward mentioned getting the strap from his father just like I did and Eddie Haskell talked about his father letting him have it right across the puss. My father did that too with a black razor strap. It sure was a different era.