Burning Ghost

            On Tuesday I spent a lot of time typing out my lecture notes from Monday’s Romantic Literature class. In the afternoon I found some time to practice my song “Lonely Mass Murderer’s Blues” four times in preparation for the my slot in the Shab-e She’r open stage that would be happening later on that night.

            Since the plastic casing for my bike’s front flasher had been partially shattered in my dooring accident last week it could no longer be secured to its complimentary bracket that’s attached to my handlebars. So in order to have a functional flasher for my ride through the snowfall and the dark to Bloor and Brunswick, I had to fix it in place with several orbits of electrical tape.

            On my way I was twice shy while passing parked cars with their lights on because I didn’t want to get doored again and so I whistled sometimes when I passed to get the driver’s attention. On the Bloor bike lane I was startled when someone opened a passenger side door on my left, even though I was probably out of range of its swing.

            After locking my bike near Bloor I walked south the half block to the Tranzac and as I approached the door Bänoo was just coming out for her cigarette. I gave her the hug that we couldn't exchange last month because I'd had a cold.

            When I walked in, Giovanna was sitting at the reception table with Marta Ziemele and Emilie Ballay while Terese Pierre was standing nearby. Giovanna said to me, “$5.00 or all your worldly goods!” I said that I’d only be putting $4.45 in the box this time but that it would be the same as me putting in $65.00 because I’d turned down work to come there that night. She responded that she wouldn’t put a value on me and I was welcome for more or less.

            I realized as I walked to my usual front row seat near the stage that I’d forgotten to bring my folding guitar stand. The last two times that I’d brought my guitar to Shab-e She’r since last April I’d remembered the stand and it had given me a lot more freedom. This time I would have to go back to leaning my axe on my knee during the readings like I used to.

            I tuned my guitar and the musical feature, Dr. Swarn Lata came to ask if I was playing that night. I told her I’d just be performing on the open stage and she nodded and walked away. I assume the conversation would have been longer if I’d said I was also a feature.

            Cy Strom came and sat across the aisle and one row back. He asked how I was and I told him that school was going well but that I’d recently had a bike accident and I’d also been penalized by Facebook for posting a nude photo. Our longest discussion was about Facebook’s “community standards”. Cy thinks that Mark Zuckerberg is running scared. I think that Mark Zuckerberg has enough money to afford therapy to address his fear of women’s bodies. I told Cy that I also got kicked off Facebook for a couple of days once for posting a photo of Friedrich Nietzsche, Lou Salomé and Paul Rée standing together topless while Rée was pinching Salomé’s nipple. I’ve recently discovered that the complete picture includes their genitalia, with Salomé holding Rée’s penis and Nietzsche wielding an impressive erection. I would have posted the fully nude picture if I’d had it and I will now that I do.

            The most recent occurrence that got me kicked off Facebook for five days was a beautiful black and white photograph of Diane Webber, a nudist supermodel and belly dancer of the 50s and 60s. In the picture she is fully nude and being lifted above the water in the middle of a swimming pool by a man with one hand on her arched back. She is facing the sky with one leg extended downward to the lower left, the other bent upward, one arm stretches to the upper right and the other to the lower right. If Zuckerberg had only been raised in Europe he might not have grown up to be such a prude.

            The event started at quarter after with Terese reading the indigenous land acknowledgement.

            Bänoo welcomed us to the sixth anniversary of Shab-e She’r, which started on November 27, 2012. She assured us that this event would be talked about for the next 200 years because she’d been interviewed about it at least fourteen times.

            Bänoo reminded us that everyone can say whatever they want and that the answer to a poem is another poem. We need to write to the world.

            The first open stage performer was Catherine M. Thompson, because Catherine had come to the very first Shab-e She’r at the Queen Gallery at Parliament and Queen.

            Catherine told us that when she was 12 her father took her to a family reunion and since then she has been fascinated with genealogy.

            From “Chronological Genealogy” – “I’m Ojibway … through grandmere and grandpere … I’m of the Acadie … I’m Germanic … I’m United Empire Loyalist … My forefather … a Prussian mercenary … I am Métis … Franco Ontarian … Colonized and colonizer … I am Canadian.”

Norman Allen read “Twilight” – “The night wind breathes … balancing the seed from which the future grows …”

From another poem – “I realized in my room, surrounded by Buddha and Hindu gods that there is no Jesus …”

            Jess Goldson read two poems. From “Explorers” – “I want to be an anti-colonial explorer of your body / I will leave as much good in you as when I found you … I will not eliminate your language and replace it with my own / We will create our own language … I will not squash your faith until your last remaining belief is in your own worthlessness … I will adorn you with comfort … I will not strip you … I will not hold you until you can no longer distinguish between a lover and a captor.”

            From “Later” – “See you later I say as I leave you for the last time … when I return our pool will be dry … You are gone … I see telephone lines … reach through the countryside searching for you … I see the curve of an arch and I remember how our bodies fit …”

            Paul Edward Costa read three poems. From “The Gaslamp in the Demon’s Right Hand” – “The demon travelled with a monk at his side … weeping and wailing about the Devil’s fall from grace … They hold him under salt water.”

            From his second poem – “The violence of the beast didn’t break me as completely as the lack of recognition on his face …”

            From his last poem – “I find that the best for living in the moment is to hide your hand beneath your clothing as if you have an itch … They’ll have no idea how close they stand to the truth.”

            The first feature was Gavin Barrett. Terese read his bio, which had some funny parts, such as, “His work has … helped elect prime ministers … drawn angry crowds in Lagos … cease and desist correspondence from the lawyers of Dolly the cloned sheep and criticism from a fictional character in a John Irving novel …”

            Gavin’s first poem was “The Deccan” – “Wise man who first said hell was hot must have come from … this place of the dead … Here the air is only rarely touched with life / When it stirs we shiver … Cold sweat … caressing those intimate inner planes of skin … Everywhere ash and stone … Above, a kite hawk circles on this still afternoon … We have not been long enough in hell.”

            Gavin said he is involved with a series called the “Tartan Turban Secret readings”. “Tartan” for his co-founder Mike Welsh and “Turban” for Gavin although he has never worn one.

            Gavin told us that his mother was a troublemaker in the Catholic Church.

            From “The Kiss” – “My father kissed my mother’s face where he stood inside her tomb … My brothers sang love and peace … The grave’s walls were six feet deep … Women raised her high and now nothing is the same.”

            From “Million’s Girl” – “Million’s girl … Money, her husband … A ride in the Maid of the Mist … An immigrant to wisdom’s shell … The camera whirs … To the lens it’s a smile from orphan’s hearts … The dream of money … Money turns in his sleep … mired in the unzipped codes … cable trucks outside splitting the signal … In the cellar the wines sighed … When Million’s girl married Money they loved the counterpoint … Million frowned not yet money … Lust too put in an appearance … The music slants … ends in a cage … in her house … A brown skinned girl who bends and sways … Money moves forward … makes things happen … Money buys a continent … His expertise in the face of their ignorance … He assaults his female clients … Money delivers a fat joint … Money’s well-read … Who moved my trees? Money takes on Enron … Money smiles … Money bares his teeth … shook the shaggy dog of his shinbone … On the day that Million’s girl slit her wrists Money went for a swim … Money ran indoors … It was the first time that Money had seen her bleed … observing dully that this was blue blood … Money said fuck three times … blood dripping to the marble floor.”

            Gavin told us that he grew up in India and came to Canada when he was thirty.

            He told the story of a woman named Mary who had worked for his family. She was in an abusive relationship with her husband and one day she doused herself in kerosene and challenged him to set her on fire if he hated her so much. He did.

            Gavin’s last poem was “Seeing Mary” – “Mary burned … flame springing from her forehead … He’d set a match to her … caught her nylon sari … Mary ran across the field … A boy with a blanket smothered Mary’s burning head … Violent light … Cinders fell and died and then Mary too.”

            Gavin Barrett uses a creative grasp of imagery drawn from experience and a sense of humour and irony to give us the view from under the table where oppression takes its meals. 

            Normally after the first feature there is a break, but this time we went directly to the second feature. I assume that this was because there was also going to be a musical feature that needed time to set up, and so it would make sense to have the break before she went on.

            The second feature was Erin Kang, who told us that she is usually full of vivacity but she had just had surgery and so her energy was lower than normal.

            She let us know that she would do some of her reading in Korean.

            She began with an untitled poem – “The voices of hundreds of women have spoken secrets of the universe to me … reminding me that distance means nothing … leaving their secrets buried like clay … I still yearn to understand the shame … insemination of our bodies … into soft layers of jewel-toned silk … shaking off generations of sea salt.”

            From “Family Dinner” – “Sure fingers guide blades … We sit cross legged … I clutch fistfuls of treasures … The house is distinctly Korean … Relatives who I called Chocolate Auntie and Chocolate Uncle … The magical gateway … The juice of persimmons … ”

            From “House” – “It is the house you always dreamed of … It has three floors and even a second basement … couch and TV, which is all you need when you are twelve … You paint you room lilac … You refuse to watch as he starts to see shadows … The pool stays empty … You pass time at the Wendy’s.”

            From “Is it Possible to Love a Ghost?” – “Two big patches of dusty gravel … crunchy little ghosts of thousands of shoes … in pursuit of the swings … I didn’t realize there was a different smell … until we went back … It is strange that … it fills me up. For most of my childhood it … drained me … Is it possible to love a place only for its memories? … moments when my heart aches for things that hurt me in the past … The way he cooked for us … Is it possible to love a ghost? To cling to water? … the spot our old restaurant burned down on the main street … It wasn’t an Asian restaurant … But we did attempt an air of exoticism by featuring a chicken teriyaki dish … amongst the bruschetta … I wondered where the echoes of us had wandered to … I am certain I left a piece of my lungs in the place where I first began to watch dad’s slow descent … where he covered his face with a shirt so we could not look into his eyes as the police led him away … Is it a betrayal to return to a place that helped spawn the monster of self-hatred? To long for a place … that rejects me still … via looks of mild surprise when they learn that I … grew up there? When Princess Diana passed my mom cried … She loaded our little arms with roses and we walked the two blocks to throw them in the lake. I never understood her romantic attachment to colonial royalty until I understood my own … Why do you return? Scenes of us throwing rocks into the water and building huge snow forts collide with scenes of broken glass and skin … The smell of roasting chestnuts mingle with the scent of old alcohol breath … There is an old tree on my school grounds … my sanctuary from the other kids … where my love for Harry Potter and ketchup chips blossomed … How many other trees have sprouted because of tears? Would I find a ghost of myself if I unearthed the roots? Would I be able to hold myself in my dirt covered hands … whisper songs of strength for future ghosts … A heritage town that would bring busloads of tourists whose faces look like mine … What heritage and for who?”

            From an untitled poem – “Yours is the breath I wonder most about … I breath air you have never feasted on … You make me want to beat my heart … Yours is the heart I wonder most about …”

            From “Woman” – “To judge ourselves by the feelings of incomplete men … purple hearts of valour blooming on our bodies … a laugh to pass down to future daughters.”

            Erin’s final poem was “Night Talks” – “The light grazes your eyes … I am baldly before you … You gather up my smithereens in your hands …”

            Erin Kang has some very good easy flowing natural writing about what she knows, which is always the best way because it’s not dragged down by contrivance. The piece “Is it Possible to Love a Ghost” is particularly strong though a little long. She could chop away a lot of it without losing anything and in fact gaining impact. She claims it’s not a poem but it would be more powerful if it were.

            We took a break and after using the washroom I went over to talk with Tom Smarda. I asked him where he’d been since I hadn’t seen him since the Shab-e She’r at the end of June. I know he leaves town to go to up north for a couple of months every summer but I’d been looking for him since Shab-e She’r moved to the Tranzac in September. He said he’s got other things he does on Tuesdays and expressed some frustration with what he referred to as artsy fartsy venues where one sits around all night just to do one song. He complained that he’s been coming to Shab-e She’r for four years and has never been invited to feature. What can I say? I think it would be great to hear Tom perform in the showcase part of the evening. He’s got some terrific songs that the audience seems to like as well and he’d put on a good show.

            Tom started playing a song that speculated about Jesus coming back. He asked if Jesus would really go around telling people he was the one and only son of god and demanding that they worship him. He sang it in kind of an ironic voice that made the woman seated just ahead of him turn around and smile at me in amusement. Then the song asked if Jesus wouldn’t more likely try to be a voice for change rather than an object of worship.

            I joked to Tom that he should ask the musical feature if she wanted harmonica accompaniment for her sitar.

            It was time for our musical feature, the sitar player Dr Swarn Lata. She sat cross-legged on the stage with her sitar and with a row of small candles burning in front of her.

            Swarn told us that she’d been in another world listening to all of the other performances of the evening. She added that Gavin had given an exact picture of India of women going through violence when he told the story of the woman whose husband had set her aflame. “Women's voices have to be heard!"

            Swarn gave us a little tutorial about the sitar before she began playing. She said it has seven upper strings, eleven bottom strings and nineteen to twenty-one frets. She said she was going to begin with an evening raga and that there are also morning and afternoon ragas. She said the first piece has only five notes but there is so much power in those notes. She told us that she had invited her tabla player to perform with her but he wouldn’t come unless he was going to get paid.

            She played very slowly at first and the first piece sounded almost like "Amazing Grace" being played with bottleneck slide guitar.

            Her second piece also had that same kind of slow Mississippi country blues feel to it, only with a lot more notes.

            It was uncanny how bluesy this sitar music sounded.

            She told us that there are ten thaats from which ragas are created.

            She kept on playing and playing with brief comments about each piece. I didn’t time her but it felt like she went way over her allotted time. Finally she asked Bänoo how much time she had left and Bänoo politely told her she could do one more.

            Her last piece was called “Vaishnav Jan To Tene Kahiye” and she sang a bit of it. She said that it was Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite song. My translation of the first two lines, of which the title is the first, is, “If you would worship the deity / You must know the pain of humanity”.

            At the end she was struggling to get to her feet and she said, “I am old now, going to be 72, so I have problems!”

            It took a few minutes to move Swarn’s things to the back of the stage so we could continue with the open mic.

            The first performer was Fira – “I did not love you the first time … not as you laid on my floor spilling trauma … My eyes closed … I let my body open … I began to love you … I burned … years up in smoke … suddenly the fire was ours …”

            Sidney White read two poems. The first was a request from someone who thought it would fit well with the other readings of that evening.

            From “No More Nice Girl” – “Men in white lace and red slippers who divide us into hookers and virgins … How dare you preach to me … How dare you raise your brow  … How dare you condescend … Men who make bombs … Fuck you shima!”

            From “Constant Reminder” – “The story of Christ is not about a god, it’s about humanity … Only his mother watched him die … If he came back he would be crucified again.”

            I was next. When I stepped up to the stage with my guitar, I guess because I was wearing black, Giovanna called out, “You look like Johnny Cash up there!”

            I sang my song “Lonely Mass Murderer’s Blues”, the chorus of which goes – “ … I guess it’s god’s little joke to leave a killer all alone / cause I’m stuck here with all of my memories in a world full of bones / Gotta find another hobby, stop my moping around / cause I’m the loneliest mass murderer in town …” It got a very good reaction from the audience and when Bänoo came to the mic she said, “That was good!” She’s told me personally over time that she’s liked a handful of things I’ve written but this was the first time she’d ever said it to a crowd.

            Nadereh read – “Lest we forget those who died … young and old … marched into their graves … died alone … in masses … far away … Lest we forget … forgetting sadly … We will.”

            Marta  Ziemele read an untitled poem which she said was written as a reaction to recent events in the news – “In a world where mistrust and fear of anyone different … In a world that insists on your silence … sing loud and discordantly … be a bullhorn … In a world that splits people apart … In a world that prizes discord … In a world that shouts emotion has no purpose … use compassion … If the voices in your head are screaming … find a tiny bright spot and stare until your eyes burn away.”

            Doe read a poem that she’d written ten minutes before she’d come to the stage – “I didn’t realize my gender was in the closet until it fell out … I thought we were comfortable in these outfits and I guess we were sometimes … It’s hard to find your gender when it looks like dresses … sensible shoes … tiny high heeled steps … My gender is here.” She added, “I’m not sure about the end!”

            Chai commented that there had been a lot of “serious poems tonight! I thought that I would go home and cry! So I thought I would smile you!”

            From his poem – “My mother told me, when in doubt, smile … I got into that habit … Driver’s licence … No smiles! Smiling while driving as bad as texting … Passport … No smiles! Why can we not smile like Justin in selfies? Many people thin he’s the only Canadian that can smile … Next time you get a selfie with Justin, say ‘No smiles Justin!’ … Bush and Blair are still walking free and we cannot smile on our passports?”

            Gloria told us that this was her first time reading at an open mic.

            From her poem – “I resent my father and my brother for being able to express their desire for women they thought were beautiful … I resent my non-rebellious self … It’s okay to be in my skin and say my words.”

            Dan Jiang read two poems.

            From “Drunken” – “Drunken with energy … I raise my cup to the empty sky … only to find it overflowing.”

            From “Ravine” – “”Lying in the hot sun … insects massage me where I want not … I know not how deep the valley … Hundreds of insects … a few butterflies dance … mystery of the depth.”

            Leah read “Bargaining with the Psychiatrist” – “ … I really think I’m fine now … I think I’m okay … weight loss, weight gain … I think I’ll do this on my own … rashes, fever, flu like symptoms … I’m fine … I’ll see the therapist twice a week … I wanna be okay … increased thoughts of suicide … risk of suicide.”

            Sargon Yousefian told us that he was going to read in Italian though he’d never read in Italian before. He asked if this would be the first time at Shab-e She’r that anyone had read in Italian and Bänoo confirmed that it was. Maybe it was the first time for someone to have read an entire poem in Italian, but on May 29 of this year, Gianna Patriarcha read a poem that had one line in Italian.

            Sargon translated his Italian poem – “Senseless … I wrote a poem … I discovered.”

            Sargon’s second poem was “Maybe Not That Much” – “He pulled my hair during sex and I could only think of how I’m scared of balding.”

            Iman Ahmed told us that her poem was inspired by her experience of working in Somalia in the field of humanitarian aid. Somalia, she said, is divided into three countries.

            From “Mogadishu” – “In Isli Market walking behind a man I didn’t know … I insisted on cotton and neutral colours … I melted … drowned the addictive soup … long dresses had to be cut short … slept for two hours … smelled the ocean.”

            Georgia Wilder read about her father’s swamp on the Ottawa River – “ … prehistoric snapping turtles … As a kid I found a dead ling … scales glistened … chanted a burial rite … talisman ling.” Georgia told us that the lings suffered a planned extinction by one game warden. But lings are not extinct or even endangered, so I guess she meant in that particular swamp they were wiped out.

            The final performer of the night was Tom Smarda. From his song – “Just as the forest supports many different varieties of trees so the human race supports many varieties of peoples … Different people have many different dispositions and callings … We carry everything on our backs … We are all visionaries and planners who can see pitfalls before they occur … It takes time to communicate and bring our visions together as one into harmony …” Tom did a wild, chaotic guitar solo and then repeated the chorus.

            The next Shab-e She’r will be on December 18.

            Terese Pierre approached me and told me that my performance was great.

            On my way out, Tom told me not to be lonely with all those bones. I told him the song wasn’t about me because I’m too anti-social to kill people.

            As I was unlocking my bike, a woman who’d been in the audience without reading stopped to ask me if I’d been writing down people’s words during the event. She was the one who’d turned and smiled when Tom was singing the funny song about Jesus during the break. I told her that I write about everything I do. It’s interesting that last month, in almost the very same spot, another woman who’d been in the audience stopped to talk to me as well.

            This event had gone later than usual. It was almost 22:30 when I got home. Fortunately I’d already cooked a potato and a carrot before leaving home and so I just had to heat up a piece of chicken and some gravy for a late dinner.

            I watched an episode of Peter Gunn. This story begins with a woman named June, who wears thick glasses arriving at the apartment of a man named Michael. He immediately begins to try to kiss her and takes off her glasses. She backs away and pulls a gun. Suddenly there is a noise in another room. Michael opens a door and is shot and killed by an unseen killer. June grabs her glasses and runs away. It turns out that June is a friend of Peter Gunn’s girlfriend Edie. Edie asks Gunn to help June. June tells him that since she saw Michael murdered someone has been trying to kill her. She says she had gone to kill Michael because he’d driven her sister to suicide. Gunn needs to know who might have been motivated to kill Michael. She can only think of a trumpet player named Tiny. Gunn goes to where Tiny is performing. He’s called “Tiny” because he’s a giant. Tiny says he never met Michael but he would have broken his neck if he had. Gunn goes to see a ballet instructor named Stashek who is sitting and stuffing his face while putting his one student through her moves and telling her that she is not hungry. His 29-year-old student is really not young enough to be a student of ballet. He is very glad to see Gunn. Gunn asks him if Michael had any friends and Stashek says that his one acquaintance was an alcoholic journalist named Rector. He tells him the name of the bar where he drinks. When Gunn leaves, the student says, “I’m hungry!” and Stashek says, “Not while I’m eating!” Gunn goes to see Rector, who suggests that one of the many girls in Michael’s little black book might have killed him. Gunn goes to look for the book but in Michael’s apartment someone opens the same door as before and tries to shoot him. Gunn shoots back and the assailant escapes. Gunn goes to June and asks her to help trap the killer. They go to Rector’s office and June pretends to recognize Rector as the killer. He admits it and says he did it because Michael took his wife away from him. They have a shootout but deliberately shoot wild and talk at the same time. Finally Rector just gives up.

            June was played by Irish actor Fentan Meyler. She won the Miss Ireland beauty contest in Dublin in 1950 and the prize was two weeks in New York. She refused to go home and moved to California and worked almost entirely in television. After the birth of her daughters she lost interest in acting.

            The hungry ballet student was played by Tamar Cooper. 

Getting Unrequited with Petrarchie and Lauranica

            It was raining when I got up on Wednesday and continued through yoga and song practice.

            The prominent high rise outside of my window is an apartment building on Dunn Avenue that’s just across the alley behind the three-story building that’s directly across the street from me. I see a side of the high rise that has no windows and so when I get up in the dark morning the building is invisible. But there’s one apartment near the top and facing west whose tenant always strings Christmas lights on the balcony in mid-November and so what I see is just a tangle of blue lights suspended high up in space until sunrise.

            I was hoping it would stop raining before I left for Romantic Literature class but no such luck this time. I was pretty much soaked by the time I got to OISE.

            I set up Professor Weisman’s desk and chair and since there was no chalk on the ledge I had to dig one of the spare pieces out that I’d hoarded in my backpack a few weeks ago for that very reason.

            Hager came in and a little later her friend arrived. When Gabriel entered the classroom he started a conversation about the rain. Before Hager got there the thought popped into my head that I’d never seen a woman with a wet hijab and I wondered if hijabis carry an extra hijab in case of that possibility. I wouldn’t have asked either of them that question though. Anyway they both showed up with umbrellas. I told the two young women and Gabriel that I ride a bike and so I got soaked and I would be riding up to St Clair and Yonge after class and so I would be getting soaked again. Hager’s friend suggested that I buy an umbrella on the way but then she remembered that I’d said that I would be on my bike. I told her that I have seen cyclists with umbrellas but not very often and they would have to drive slowly. Also if the wind is strong they could get knocked off balance.

            I walked to the washroom and greeted the professor in the hall as she was arriving. I could smell the aroma of burning sage somewhere on the floor. When I got back to the classroom I commented that someone must have been doing a smudge ceremony. The professor said, “Oh! That’s what it was! I thought it was something else!” She’d thought somebody was smoking pot. I said to Gabriel that at the prison where he works there must be smudge ceremonies for the indigenous inmates. He confirmed that there are. I said there are a disproportionate percentage of Aboriginal Canadians in prison and Blacks too, but he said that it looks pretty even to him at the South Toronto Correctional Centre where he works. I’m sure Gabriel’s experience is valid but according to statistics 28% of inmates in Canadian prisons are Native and 10% are African Canadian. That’s five times the percentage of Natives in the general population and three times that of Blacks.

            Gabriel told me that growing up in Nigeria he didn’t know that he was Black and he didn’t find out till he came to Canada.

            I reminded Professor Weisman that we’d talked about the silver rod in William Blake’s The Book of Thel as possibly being phallic. I wondered what the gender compliment to “phallic” when one is speaking academically. I knew that “yonic” used to be used but not anymore. She told me that the term would be “vaginal” .I said that makes sense since they are both Latin. She said though that the silver rod and the golden bowl are from the Eucharist. I argued that the last line that Thel hears before running away was, “Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?” She confirmed that Blake is definitely talking about the hymen there.

            The professor began the class by giving us information about our exam next week. She said that we would have a choice of two topics, each on two authors for our in-class essay.

            We took a last look at William Blake’s “The Book of Thel”.

            Thel is Greek for desire.

            Her motto establishes both Biblical and sexual contexts.

            The rod and the bowl

            Wisdom and love

            Ecclesiastes:

            Sceptre and chalice

            Time and season.

            Thel’s motto challenges conventional wisdom just as the book challenges readerly expectations. The questions go to the heart of conventional uses of imagery, the division of the sexes and the sacred and the profane.

            The poem is discombobulating. Are the allusions Biblical or sexual?

            Thel is a virgin in a pastoral setting. The pastoral is about ease of being.

            She asks what the use is of existence if life ends.

            Thel is clearly a figure that is continuous with those in Blake’s Songs of Innocence.

            Is she entering Earthly existence?

            The questions she hears from the voice in her own grave cannot be answered.

            Why must we suffer? Why can’t we close our eyes to the poison of a smile?

            These are Petrarchian images. Petrarch was the poet who wrote “Songs for Laura” with references to “Cupid’s poison darts”

            Line 19 in plate 6 of The Book of Thel, "Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?" clearly refers to the foreskin.

            There is no resolution here and Thel does not reconcile herself to hearing the still, sad music of humanity as Wordsworth did.

            She asked how we experience the ending of the poem?
            She called on me to answer first and I said that it seems to me that Thel is visiting the future grave of her own innocence. The questions that she hears the voice from her grave ask are in a sense the opposite of those that she asked earlier. In line 6 of plate 1 she asks, “Why fades the lotus?” but in line 11 of plate 6 the question is, “Why can’t we just not listen to our own destruction?” The latter questions are more worldly and not about transient vulnerable things. The voice from the grave is more sexualized and more about the body. The ending ties into the overall theme of the continuous cycle of things and Thel is being invited to enter into a new and sexual level of participation in that in that cycle but she retreats.

            We are doing the work that Thel does not want to do.

            I asked what we should take from Blake’s image for the cover of the book of Thel, which shows Thel standing in the foreground in a dress and holding her shepardess’s crook. Beside her are the lilies which are spoken of earlier but behind those are the figure of another young woman, perhaps the future Thel, being it seems tackled by a naked young man that is jumping from the lilies but perhaps even part of them because the ends of his leg look more like stems than feet. The professor said that there may be the suggestion of sexual violence or maybe it’s drawing our attention to our own vulnerability.

            For the second half of class we moved from the trauma of William Blake to look at the sorrowful poetry of Charlotte Smith.

            Petrarch was an Italian early modern poet whose great love for Laura inspired him to write sonnets that are still read today and those in turn inspired the English revival.

            Sonnets are 14 line poems with the last two being a two-line unit called a couplet. The 18th Century sonnets had many rhyming couplets. Petrach had many imitators during the Renaissance. These poems always had a sonnet lady like Laura and the poet played the role of a man sublimating his sexuality into poetry and burning for a virgin Madonna figure on a pedestal, that was pure, inaccessible and would never consummate. The poet burns for the lady while at the same time admiring her chastity. 

            There is an old saying that poetry comes from thwarted and impoverished desire. Frustration is Petrarchian.

            Is the Patrarchian sonnet potentially anti-feminist? God yes!

            The Shakespearian sonnets are different because many of them were addressed to men and also because they were more about immortalizing the lover.

            The Petrarchian exception to the frustrated sonnet is the epithalamion sonnet. A book by Edmund Spenser entitled Amoretti and Epithalamion contained love sonnets to his fiancé. There was marital consummation and yet the sonnets were still Patrarchian in form.

            There are zillions of English renaissance sonnets and the sonnet became part of English nationalist pride.

            After the 17^th Century the sonnet disappeared, mostly because it had been displaced by longer forms. It was Charlotte Smith who brought the sonnet back in the late 18^th Century.

            Sonnet ladies were barely real and women were abstracted out of existence by the traditional sonnet. Smith was being gutsy because sonnets were supposed to be for men to write to women. She appropriated something that was of high cultural status. She was standing on her rights. She used them to represent her own desires but they were more sorrowful than sexual. She turned the sonnet on its head and hers became amazingly popular.

            Charlotte Smith had been pushed into marriage at the age of fifteen and separated from her husband after bearing him twelve children. He went into debtor's prison and she needed to write to survive. There was more money in novels then and the same is true now.

            Wordsworth said that history owes a great debt to Charlotte Smith.

            We looked at her elegiac poem “Written at the Close of Spring”. She is using the high prestige of lyric tradition.

            Not only is the renewal of the sonnet by a woman but also the scientific footnotes are her own.

            The flowers that her speaker observes are used as metaphors for the flowering and decay of human happiness but the footnotes establish the flowers as a real part of the empirical world.

            Smith – “The garlands fade.”

            Thel – “Why does the lily fade?”

            Her footnotes can be compared to the gloss in Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". She interrupts the fluid and melodious sonnet with a footnote. She keeps the reader in the real world and not in the Renaissance with an idealized subject. One’s mind should be exploding from the specific images she presents.

            The first eight lines of the sonnet make up the octave in which an idea is presented. Line nine is the beginning of the sestet of the last six lines in which the conclusion or working out of the idea takes place. 

            And so in the octave of this poem we have the image of fading flowers followed by four lines about fading humanity. It’s a conventional comparison but as she says in the final couplet, it’s a comparison that does not work. The couplet subverts our expectation because unlike flowers, we don’t get a second spring.

            I pointed out that the first line of the couplet relates to the octave while the last line relates to the sestet.

            After class I went back out into the rain and began my ride up to St Clair and Yonge to get a haircut at Topcuts. I could have picked a better day but my stylist Amy is only there on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings and she’d said she was going away in December. Since I was only downtown on Mondays and since next Monday would already be in December, I figure that today might be my last chance to see her. The trip up to St Clair felt shorter than I expected, even though I’ve ridden up there probably a hundred times. I rode past St Clair to the Bank of Montreal to get some cash, but even with that delay I was three-quarters of an hour early for Amy’s shift.

From the way one of the stylists asked, "Can I help you?" in an almost suspicious tone, I think she thought that I was a homeless person taking shelter from the rain. Even when I told her that I was waiting for Amy she didn't seem to approve of me bringing down property values by sitting and waiting for so long. She reminded me that Amy wouldn’t be there for another half an hour.

While I was waiting an older woman with short red hair had just finished getting a haircut. She had mobility problems and made her way from the stylist’s chair to the waiting seats with a walker. I got her coat and under jacket for her and the other stylist helped her put them on. I opened the door to the street for her and she asked if she could hold on to me because there’s a slight drop to the sidewalk from the entry area between Topcuts and the store upstairs.

Amy arrived about fifteen minutes early for her shift and asked if I’d been waiting long. The other stylist said, “Half an hour!”

It turned out that I could have come on another Monday since Amy wouldn’t be leaving for Thailand until December 24. She said it’s a four-day trip to where her parents are but I think she was counting both ways and the time loss on the way back. It’s a 14 hour flight to Taiwan with a three hour layover before the plane to Bangkok and then whatever land transport she and her family will take to get to her parent’s place in the country. I added up the hours she quoted and they came out to a full day.

It should be exciting for Amy’s parents since they haven't seen their grandchildren for seven years and now her daughter is in her early teens and her son is a young adult. I asked if her parents ever came to Canada but she told me that her mother has osteoporosis so bad that she can’t sit down for very long and so she would be able to handle a 14 hour flight.

I asked Amy if she thought I should get a haircut more often but she said that my hair doesn’t look good when it’s too short and so every three months is fine. My last cut had been in August and it'd been starting to look grungy for the last few weeks.

After wishing Amy a good trip I headed back out into the rain.

I was very much looking forward to getting home and putting on some dry clothing but I needed a couple of things at Freshco. I bought four bags of grapes, a loaf of Bavarian sandwich bread, a package of one-year-old cheddar, a small tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (which they abbreviate on the receipt to “It’s not butter”), a can of coffee, a bottle of non-alcohol mouthwash and I found they were selling Irish Spring soap in packs of two for a dollar each and so I took three. The cashier commented, “You really like your grapes!”

It was nice to get home and to change into dry clothing. After lunch I took a late siesta and got up in the evening.

That night I watched an episode of Peter Gunn. A woman named Katie Mears is alone on a couch in a big mansion and happily flirting on the phone when someone sneaks into the room and Kills her with the fireplace poker. Later at Mother’s Katie's sister Helena is waiting to talk with Gunn. She wants him to find Katie, who’s been gone for two days. The Mears family is very rich and Gunn is surprised that Helena gives him Katie’s place of employment as a starting point, since she didn’t need to work to make a living. Gunn goes to the florist shop where Katie had worked and finds out that she had been a highly valued employee. In exchange for Gunn purchasing three-dozen flowers from the shop, which he arranges to be sent to Edie, the proprietor gives Gunn the address of Ramone, one of Katie’s boyfriends. Ramone is a playboy who works out a lot. He says Katie was just one of the many women in his life but doesn’t like being questioned. Gunn goes to Miguel’s Mexican restaurant and Miguel is very glad to see him but Miguel has an ulcer from eating Mexican food. Miguel knows Ramone but does not like him. He tells Gunn that Ramone works for a lonely-hearts club. Gunn talks with Clarissa, the president of The Grand Friendship Club. When she resents Gunn asking cop questions he threatens to call the real thing and so she lets him look at her catalogue. It turns out that Ramone is the star of her stable with a long list of female customers, including Katie Mears but with Helena's picture beside it. As Gunn leaves the club he is dragged into an alley by two suited thugs. They say, “You’ve got a big nose chum and we’re gonna cut it down to size!” They beat him and punch him in the nose and while he’s on the ground they say, "Save what's left of your nose and find another case!" When next we see Gunn his nose seems fine. Gunn talks with Detective Harmon at the police station and he tells Gunn that Katie wasn't just working a regular job for kicks. Helena had all the money. Watching Helena’s house, Gunn sees Ramone arrive. She opens the door and they kiss passionately. Later Gunn confronts Ramone at his apartment and accuses him of killing Katie. He admits that he was after her money but swears he didn’t kill her. Gunn believes him and so now the only suspect is Helena who may have killed her sister out of jealousy for her social competence. They need to find the body and so Gunn arranges to trick Helena into leading him to it. She hears a rumour that Katie has been seen at the flower shop that day. She goes there and is told that Katie had been there but went to Miguel’s. At Miguel’s she told Katie went to Mother’s. Mother tells her that Katie just left with a good-looking fella. In a panic Helena drives home and begins to desperately dig in the place where she’d buried Katie. Gunn gently stops her and leads her away.

Helena was played by Katherine Bard, who was married to producer Martin Manulis. He created The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and produced Days of Wine and Roses. .

            Katie was played by Marian Collier.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum on Peter Gunn

            On Sunday I had a dream about a Twitter library with two levels. There were two offices above each other. It was kind of a refuge that I escaped to. The top one was started by George Eliot Clarke, which is ironic since he’s not on any kind of social media besides email and seems to be a bit of a luddite in general.

            I didn’t go anywhere and spent a lot of the day catching up on my journal.

            That night I watched an episode of Peter Gunn. This story begins in Manchester, England in 1945 at a company called Spain and Wilcox Textiles. Wilcox runs the scientific end of the company and Spain is the businessman. Wilcox tells Spain he’ll have developed the miracle fibre he’s been working on by morning, and so Spain leaves. Wilcox has hired a poor man as an assistant and tells him he can wear one of his suits. But after the man is dressed Wilcox knocks him unconscious, plants dynamite in the lab and blows it up from outside. Fourteen years later, Spain is just being released from prison. He's still rich but he only has one use for his resources now and that's to track down Wilcox and kill him. He finds out that Wilcox moved to the United States and so he goes there and hires Peter Gunn to find him. Peter goes to Joe Jack Fabrics where Joe and Jack are very much like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They are super excited, always agree with one another and often finish one another’s sentences. They are trying to make a sale of some new fabrics to a middle-aged woman when she looks across the room and exclaims, “That’s nice over there! What’s that?” She’s talking about Peter Gunn, who’s just walked in. Joe and Jack seem to know Gunn well and are very happy to see him. He inquires about Wilcox and shows his picture. They don’t know him but they say if he’s in fibres and British he probably has a tweed mill. They direct him to Sadie at the Men’s Clothing Journal. She lets Gunn go through her files and he discovers that Wilcox has changed his name to Blankenship. Gunn goes to meet him at his upstate textile mill just long enough to hint that he knows whom he is. Blankenship makes a call and on Gunn's way back someone shoots up his car on the road. Gunn goes to talk to Spain and wants to know why he's being shot at. In exchange for Wilcox’s new name, Spain confesses that he is there to kill him. Gunn calls Lieutenant Jacoby to get police help in stopping Spain from killing Blankenship and thereby turning Gunn into the finger man in a murder. Gunn calls Blankenship Mills to warn him but finds out that Blankenship is actually right there in town for the textile show. Gunn goes to see Jacoby and they have a comical discussion about the fact that even if Spain kills Blankenship they won’t be able to charge him because of double jeopardy as he’s already been punished for having killed Blankenship. They go to the textile show to warn Blankenship. Even though this is filmed in black and white it is obviously a very colourful setting with fabrics draped artfully around and three bathing suit beauties are posing on a bridge over a fountain. Blankenship is up on a ladder and Jacoby tells him that he's under arrest for the murder of the homeless man in Manchester. Suddenly Spain arrives with a gun and points it at Blankenship. Gunn and Jacoby tell Spain that if he kills Blankenship it’s a new and separate crime and so double jeopardy won’t apply. Blankenship throws the bolt of fabric he’d been holding down at Spain, knocking him over. Blankenship lets his ladder fall and follows its arc to the other side of the artificial stream. What follows is a scene similar to some of the Blake Edwards chaos that one might see in a Pink Panther movie with other people falling from ladders and scaffolding and bikini clad models getting in the way of the chase. Blankenship climbs on top of some props and tries to swing away Tarzan style on a rope of fabric, but Spain shoots him in mid swing. Spain hands over his gun and just says, “I had to. It was all I lived for.”

            Sadie was played by Helene Marshall, who is a cousin of Veronica Lake.

            Joe and Jack’s customer was played by Jean Engstrom, who played a lesbian in the 1957 horror film, Voodoo Island. The monsters in this movie were cobra plants that fed on women and ripped men apart. So I guess if Joe and Jack were Tweedledee and Tweedledum then Jean Engstrom was Alice.

           

            

Jackie Coogan

            After the food bank of Saturday I rode home in the rain to put my groceries away and then I headed back out to No Frills. I didn’t need much there and so I just bought grapes, raspberries and Greek yogourt.

            When I got home I put my bags down and went back out to the liquor store to buy a couple of cans of Creemore. I took the beers home and put them in the fridge and then I went out again to stand in front of Bike Pirates. When I’d been there on Thursday night I’d intended to take my twisted rim home with me as a souvenir but in my tiredness after having been there for seven hours, I forgot. I figured that since I’d been there till closing time on Thursday and they weren’t open on Friday that there was a good chance that they wouldn’t have thrown out the scrap yet if I showed up when they opened on Saturday. Dave unlocked the gate about ten minutes late. I found my twisted rim and I also grabbed a couple of garbage tire tubes to use for my shoulder exercises.

The twisted rim looks kind of cool when it’s spinning horizontally, so I think I could do something with it. I wonder if it’s too heavy to hang from my ceiling.

I had considered going to the police station on Saturday to file a report about my accident but it was raining and I didn’t want to ride around in the wet. Besides, I had writing to do.

That night I had an egg with toast and a beer and watched two episodes of Peter Gunn.

A man named Sam, in town for a bowling tournament is alone in the bowling alley at night doing some paperwork. An attractive woman named Emily approaches him. She said she waited for him. He says they shouldn’t see each other anymore. Two men approach, one shows him a picture of him and Emily together and they demand $5000. Sam punches one of them and is about to take on the other when the man he’d punched hits him over the head with a bowling ball and kills him. Sam’s body is found elsewhere but he was still wearing a badge from the bowling tournament and so Lieutenant Jacoby is investigating at the bowling alley. Gunn arrives because he’s been hired by Woolrich, the chairman of the tournament to get some pictures back from the same trio that we saw at the beginning. She told him her name was Francis and took him to her place where the pictures were secretly taken. Gunn goes to the woman’s address and talks with her landlady. Later Woolrich tells Gunn and Jacoby that he’d found out that Sam had been a member of one of the visiting bowling teams. Gunn thinks there’s a connection between the blackmailers and the murder and so he asks for one of the tournament badges so he can pose as one of the bowlers. He goes to the club where Emily picked up Woolrich and eventually meets her. He pretends to be a naïve yokel from Illinois and puts on a pretty good performance. Emily calls herself Margaret this time and tells him to meet her at her place. Jacoby is nearby and hears her give the address. While Gunn is with Emily her two partners come in with a camera. The problem is that one of the blackmailers recognizes “Henry” as Peter Gunn and punches him. They plan on killing Gunn but he punches one of them. The other is pointing a gun when Jacoby bursts in and shoots him. Jacoby refuses to take him to the hospital until they confess to Sam’s murder.

Emily was played by Mara Corday, who started out as a dancer and model. She appeared in a lot of B movies, starred in the horror film “Tarantula” and had bit parts in a lot of her friend Clint Eastwood's movies, including the scene in which he says, “Go ahead, make my day!”

Emily’s landlady was played by Lillian Bronson who was the first female judge in a Perry Mason episode. A muralist painted a portrait of her on the side of a building near the Hollywood freeway’s downtown interchange that became known as “The Old Woman of the Freeway”.

Woolrich was played effortlessly by Hollywood legend Jackie Coogan, who was on stage in Vaudeville with his parents from the age of four. At the age of seven he starred in The Kid with Charlie Chaplin. By the time he was nine he was one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. When he came of age his father had died and his mother had remarried. His parents refused to give him the $4 million he’d made as a child and after a lawsuit he only got $125,000. At 23 he married Betty Grable but only for three years. His career dragged for several years until at the age of fifty he became Uncle Fester on The Addams Family”. He said the thing he was most proud of was that no one has ever beaten him at Scrabble.

The second store begins in a prison as a fake priest with a fake Bible visits a prisoner named Joe and gives him a gun. Joe uses the gun to break out. Next we see Gunn go to see a man in a wheelchair with his face covered in bandages. He wants to hire Gunn to find his “brother” Frank Norbert but not to reveal that he’s looking for him. He pays him $2000. Gunn is suspicious from the start and hands the money over to the police. He finds out from the cops that Frank owns a barbershop that is a front for something but they haven’t found out what. Gunn goes there looking for Frank but the barber threatens him with a razor. At Mother’s, Edie sings “How About You?” by Burton Lane and Ralph Freed. After Gunn leaves Mother’s he is forced at gunpoint into a car and taken to a meeting with Frank at his barbershop. Joe had been a partner with Frank in an armed robbery with a haul of $300,000 but only Joe got caught. Joe wants his share and Frank wants to keep it. They are about to force Gunn to take them to Joe when Gunn begins to fight. He flips one of the men into the other and smashes the light bulb before Frank can shoot. He throws talcum in Frank’s face and escapes. Gunn finds out that Frank has a father who owns a restaurant with a small room at the back where Frank hides out. Gunn calls Joe and tells him he can find Frank there. Meanwhile Gunn and the police stake the place out. Joe confronts Frank and Frank has a tin box containing the money and when Joe sees the $300,000 he lets his guard down long enough for Frank to grab a gun and shoot him. Frank escapes through the window but is surrounded by cops. There’s a shootout and Frank is killed. The box breaks open and the money is blowing all over the street.

            

Smarter Than the Average Stupid

            On Saturday morning my shin injury from getting doored on Wednesday night was bothering me before I got up and I was aware of it through yoga and song practice but didn’t notice it much by the time I left for the food bank. I was worried though that I would feel some backlash later from standing around for two hours.

            This was my first visit to the food bank since a couple of weeks before marijuana was legalized. I’d had a couple of essays to work on for my Romantic Literature course and in the two Saturdays between writing those assignments I had a cold.

            The line up was fairly long but that was normal for this time of the month. My place was just west of the steps of 1501 Queen where a very loud but friendly drunk guy of 40 or 50 in a leather jacket was sitting and continuously talking in long, slurred sentences. He wore glasses and had a receding hairline but lots of wild, uncombed short hair that stuck up in the air on top of his head.  His jeans were so big around the waist that when he sat his pants cleared his buttocks and though no flesh was exposed he was actually sitting on his long sweatshirt that was deeply tucked into the pants. When he stood he had to hold his jeans up with one hand. He had marks on his face that I couldn’t make out from where I was standing but it looked like he’d been in a fight recently. Every now and then he took a swig from a big bottle of golden brown liquid that was in his pocket. I couldn’t read the label.

            A guy with shopping cart from Dollarama that already had some cat food and kitty litter inside took the place behind me. He told me he wanted to go and sit inside and asked me if I would watch his stuff. It was ironic and a bit funny that he was worried about someone stealing a shopping cart that had been stolen from Dollarama. I told him that I wasn’t going to take responsibility for his stuff but I pointed out that marking the two spots in line ahead of me was one cart and one backpack, neither of which was being watched and neither of which had been stolen. In fact, I have never seen anyone steal anyone’s unattended cart in what has probably been a hundred times now that I’ve been in the food bank line-up. He just reminded me that he was behind me and took the cart inside to sit down with it.

            I wandered a little further west to avoid the smoke from nearby cigarettes and was greeted by the Polish man that I’d had conversations with the last two times I was at the food bank. The last time we’d talked he tried to tell me that Jews were to blame for the Russian Revolution. This time he started off by asking where I’d been. I explained that I’d had schoolwork to do. He wanted to know what I was studying and I said, “English”. “But you speak English already!” “English Literature”, I clarified. He told me he wants to move to Hamilton because Toronto is too expensive. He said he’s found a building where he wants to live in Hamilton with a Tim Horton’s and a park nearby and he’s on the waiting list for it with Ontario Housing. He’s been told that if he waits two more years till when he’s 65 it will speed up the process but he says he can’t wait that long. He’s changed his preferences from a specific floor to any floor and he’s hoping that will make things go faster.

            I applied for Ontario Housing twenty years ago so that we could have a bigger place when my daughter was seven and first moved in with me. We were offered a few places over the next fourteen years but we didn’t like them. She grew up and moved out six or seven years ago. I’m still on the list but I just keep my name there as a back up in case something happens to cause me to lose my place. Earlier this year they offered me a place in a well-known cockroach and crack tower on Dunn Avenue but I said I’d rather be homeless than live there.

            I pulled out my copy of the Norton Anthology of Romantic Literature and began re-reading William Blake’s "Book of Thel". It's a hard poem to figure out and people have been trying for centuries. I think it's meant to be a joke about people that are afraid of losing their virginity with a lesson in there that human sexuality is part of the overall cycle of life.

            I finished re-reading Percy Shelley’s Preface to Prometheus Unbound. One thing that stands out is that he mentions Satan as being the hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

            While I was reading, the drunken guy called over to ask what I was reading. I told him, “Romantic literature”. He said, “You’re smarter than the average stupid! I’m gonna read that book!” He came over to talk with me and once he was up close it was more obvious that he’d been in a fight. In fact, the reddish black marks looked more like he’d been repeatedly booted in the head rather than gotten punched. He repeated that I was “smarter than the average stupid” and declared that it’s good to know how to read. He told me that his cousin is in the band “Three Days Grace”; though if he dropped the name of the member he’s related to I didn’t pick it up. They’re from Peterborough though so maybe that’s his neck of the woods as well. He told me that someone had given him his motorcycle jacket last night while he was lying on the street. He said a guy put it on top of him and said, “This would look better on you!” He said he asked him “Why?” and he answered, “Because you look cold!” He told me, “People give me stuff because I talk to them!” He said, “I don’t do drugs, I just do alcohol … and I fight!” I commented, “It looks like you’ve been in a fight.” “Yeah, but I’m still standing!”

            When the food bank was about to let people in, we got in line and it began to rain a bit. The drunken guy was about six places ahead of me. He turned and said to me again, “I’m gonna read that book! I read “War and Peace” in two days!” “You read War and Peace in two days?” “Well, three days.” “That’s a very big book!” “I just read the first volume. There are seven volumes. It’s about a war that my grandfather fought in, World War One!” I said, “War and Peace is not about World War One. It’s about a war between Russia and France”. He said, “I know, but I’m talking about a book that I want to write!”

            He approached a middle-aged black-haired woman in glasses who was a few places ahead of him in line. She had been on the steps of 1501 Queen where the drunken guy had been sitting when I’d first arrived. At that time she’d seemed merely amusedly disgusted by his state. But now as he walked up to her in the line-up she turned to him and said, “Stay the fuck away from me or I’ll knock you out!” He politely moved back to his place in line.

            A short and possibly homeless woman that I’ve seen on the streets ever since I moved back to Parkdale 22 years ago came up to the drunken guy. He turned and asked the guy behind him if it was okay to let her in front of him. The guy behind him said that she wouldn’t just be in front of him but twenty people. The drunken guy told her that she’d have to go to the back of the line. The guy behind me with the stolen shopping cart suddenly spoke up to the doorperson, Martina and complained that the drunken guy has been bothering everybody in line and that he’s been drinking from a bottle of Fireball in his pocket and that he should be at the back of the line. I corrected the shopping cart guy that the drunken guy had been there before me. Martina told the drunken guy that she couldn’t let him downstairs because he wasn’t making any sense. She said she would get him a bag of milk if he wanted. She also spoke to the homeless woman and told her that she had to go to the back of the line. I think the homeless woman might be a francophone because Martina added, “Tu fait quelques choses.” It means, “You do something” so I don’t know what Martina was trying to communicate. The drunken guy went inside and came out a few minutes later with a small bag of food.

            I couldn’t understand why people were so annoyed by the drunken guy, since as drunks go he was not obnoxious. It almost seemed that people felt like they could be freely pissed off at him because he was less dangerous than other drunks.

            When I got downstairs, the regular volunteer at the reception desk was there with a skinny young man in glasses, who looked like he might be still in high school. They were watching with surprise a video and when I came up to the desk she explained that they were watching a video of the shopping crowds out for Black Friday in South Africa. I said, “I didn’t know they had Black Friday in South Africa. It’s barely even a thing in Canada!” The young guy was surprised when I told him that there was no Black Friday in Canada a few years ago. I think that 2008 was when Canadian stores first started having Black Friday sales because that year the Canadian dollar was at par in value with the US dollar and they wanted to keep Canadians spending on this side of the border.

            The young guy was surprised that South Africa would have Black Friday because he’d though it was a failed economy. I told him that South Africa is a very rich country, with diamond mines and gold mines. I guessed to myself that it was probably the richest or second richest country in Africa and I was right. Only Nigeria is richer in Africa and as a matter of comparison South Africa has more than twice the GDP of Israel.

            One of the volunteers at the shelves was a very tall and outgoing woman with short purple hair. I’ve seen her around the food bank before and she looks very familiar, though I can’t recall where I might have met her. She introduced the young man at the reception desk to someone as, “One of my children”.

            The guy behind me with the stolen shopping cart told the receptionists that he was shopping for five extra people who live at his house though he couldn’t prove it. The woman at the desk said she’d take his word for it this time but he’d have to bring their cards in next time. I was still waiting to shop but the guy behind me asked the purple haired woman if there was any kitty litter in the back. She went back to the warehouse and brought him some litter. He said to her, “I want you to serve me when it’s my turn because I like you!”

            At the top of the first set of shelves were small bags of “Kuna Pops”. They’re basically a puffed snack like cheese puffs but made with quinoa and chia. It’s a product of Ecuador by a company called Kunachia and “Kuna” means “welcome” in Quechua. I got three bags of three different flavours: spicy chilli, white cheddar and tomato and basil.

            Below those were bags containing about 25 restaurant portions of various jams and jellies. On the next sets of shelves I got a can of chickpeas, a tin of tuna and a can of Italian Wedding soup. The big score from the shelves though was a 500 ml bottle of extra virgin olive oil.

            At the dairy and meat station, Angie looked like she had a really bad cold. I turned down the lactose free milk, but I took the 650-gram container of cherry yogourt, a one-litre bottle of organic peach-mango smoothie and three small eggs. I didn’t want any frozen hot dogs or generic ground chicken. She offered me some hummus but then realized that what she had was some kind of tofu product. She gave me another bottle of the smoothie instead.

            They’d moved the bread section so that it was between Angie and Sylvia’s stations. I grabbed a bag of a dozen flat buns to take home and freeze.

            Sylvia offered me a choice between small or large potatoes. When it comes to food bank potatoes there’s a better chance that the larger spuds will be old or have bad parts, so I took a bag of about thirty little ones. She gave me three medium sized tomatoes that were in very good shape. She put three chubby broken carrots in my bag and it turned out that one of them had a rotten hole in it that left orange slime all over my bag. I got a small bunch of broccoli, two onions and a bag of blueberries.

            All in all it wasn’t a bad haul from the food bank this time, though the food was quite a bit more generic than the characters in the lineup.