FOOD BANK ADVENTURES: SIGNS

            On Saturday morning I worked out most of the chords for the first verse of “Marilou Reggae" by Serge Gainsbourg. I assume all the verses are musically the same and since there is no chorus, except for the instrumental break there is probably not much more to work out. Concentrating to hear the right chords tuckered me out.

            I wrote my Friday journal entry.

            At 9:45 I went to the food bank. For the middle of the month the line-up was not that long, with only about ten people ahead of me. The guy on the heart ahead of the one I was about to stand on smiled and nodded. “My favourite colour!” I said. As I occupied the purple heart behind his blue one. He laughed a bit and looked around at all the hearts while shaking his head.

            A few minutes later the man ahead called someone and greeted them in slow French, then he switched fast and more comfortable Spanish (or perhaps Brazilian Portuguese), which was obviously his first language.

            A few more clients came to step on the hearts behind me. Beth went by and stopped briefly to say hello. She said she had to get to a spot before too many people filled them up but told me to have a great rest of the day. I said, "You too." and she responded, "You're such a sweetheart!" I couldn't quite figure out how saying "you too" made me a sweetheart. But nobody ever says, “That guy's such a sweetheart! I hate him!” So I guess the more people that think you're a sweetheart, the more good will you have in the good will bank.

            I took out my book of French stories with the translation on the opposite page and read the first couple of pages of "The Return of the Prodigal Son" by André Gide. The speaker begins by comparing himself to the prodigal son from the New Testament parable. Then he describes the moments just before his return. I haven't gotten to the part that religious people found offensive.

            Marlena came down the line with a shopping cart full of cabbages, calling out “Cabbages?” like a hawker in a market. I didn't want one and I saw a lot of others shake their heads but she took the cart around the corner and must have had takers at the back of the line. Either that or she used them all for bowling practice on Beaty and sent them all rolling down to the lake.

            At the southeast corner of Queen Street and Beaty Avenue is a sign that says, “DO NOT BLOCK INTERSECTION". On the silver grey back of the yellow sign is a random collage of tags and stickers. The stickers include one for Praise Headwear. It shows a wolf’s head in the centre of a circle around which the name of the company runs. The website shows that the owner is Andrew Kowalski who started the company to raise funds for Sick Kids Hospital. His goal was $10,000 in the first year and he reached it last year. Fifty percent of the profits go to Sick Kids, Pathstone Mental Health and Urban Tails Animal Rescue.

Another is a sticker for DaveMauz.Com. Mauz is a contemporary Toronto artist and film maker who specializes in public art, including a cube van made of garbage.

Another sticker is a circle with what looks like the image of a sunrise over an island and the words look like peru!53.com or pepui53.com, neither one of which is a website

Another sticker shows a Janus headed green octopus with goggles above its eyes.

Another sticker looks like appropriated Haida art twisted into an abstract shape.

Another is a painting of a man in a Mohawk haircut

Another is a hexagon with two white borders outlined in black and containing a backward number 4.

Another is of an angry emoji smoking a joint

Another shows hands held up inside a laurel wreath

Another shows a cartoon glove giving the finger

Some of the tags are also on stickers but look home made

Another is done in graffiti style with the letters PHONKAV … and I couldn't make out the rest but there are images of electronic instruments and speakers around the letters.

Another is a sticker for the Scarlet Begonias tattoo and photography studio on Woodbine in East York. “Scarlet Begonias” is the name of a song by The Grateful Dead.

Another has the logo for The Good Company clothing store in New York

Another says “Segue Was Here”.

Another shows a pyramid shaped face with a joint between its teeth and the words around the top of the circle read, “Smoke em if ya got em” and at the bottom is “Verbs".

Another shows the symbol for the anarchist art collective “Indecline”

Another says “ZONR” which is the name of lots of things

Another says “BURNER” which also could be anything

Another says #stonr and there is a Twitter and Instagram profile for that person. The Instagram profile has lots of photos of graffiti.

Another says AUTO1, which also could be anything.

Finally there is a homemade and hand painted sticker of Crack Lizard which shows up all over the place in graffiti.

            Because of the common theme of a lot of the stickers I assume that one person put them all up. Plus they would have needed to be on someone’s shoulders or on a stepladder to paste them. They are not organized in an aesthetic manner and so it seems like more of a statement of “things I like" rather than a work of art in itself.

            On the second floor window of an apartment at 1501 Queen West, above where I was standing there is a sign pasted on the window but I couldn't quite read it because it was pasted to be read from the inside and so I would need to hold it up to a mirror. The most I could read was “Home is where ..." While I was looking at the sign a little brown dog (perhaps a Pomeranian) looked out and down at me. He looked silently for quite a while and then got mad at the eye contact and began to bark. He was gone by the time I picked up my camera. I took a picture of the sign and figured it out after looking at it at home. It reads, “Home is where our story begins”.

            It took about an hour for Marlena to come around with the boxes of food, so they were a lot slower than the week before. 

            I took a bag of "chicken flavoured” organic stuffing mix from Whole Foods; a can of Lebanese fava beans; a bag of Arborio rice; a pack of chicken flavoured ramen noodles; two 295 ml bottles of orange mango juice; two single serve fruit bottom yogourts; a half kilo pack of cheese slices, six eggs, a pack of frozen diced onions; a 382 ml zip lock envelope of fruit salad in juice; a small frozen spinach and ricotta pizza; two small bunches of broccoli; three onions; three apples; four mandarins, two limes and a cantaloupe. Some of the vegetables came from a second paper bag that Marlena handed me later.

            I put all of the stuff I didn’t want into the big paper bag. That included a box of rolled oats, three buns, several potatoes and carrots. A woman with a Jamaican accent and wearing a black mouth mask gladly took the bag from me when I offered it. When I was unlocking my bike she passed me, saying that she was going to ask Marlena for a cantaloupe. I told her that she could have mine. She hesitated because she didn’t’ want to take what I’d initially decided to keep but I told her I prefer grapes.

            This was the first time I can remember when the food bank didn’t offer any milk and some kind of at least generic meat.

            I took my food home and then headed out to the supermarket. There was a line-up of about ten people for No Frills and about a ten minute wait. I bought five bags of black sable grapes, a pint of strawberries, a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, mouthwash, and some Greek yogourt.

            My landlord and his man were doing some work in the entrance of my building.

            Later he knocked on my door and told me that another tenant in the building next door complained about me playing guitar in the morning and is threatening to call the city. He handed me a note with her name and phone number. First I looked up Shayla Anderson to see if I could get an image. I found a Facebook page for a young blonde woman in Toronto by that name that hasn’t been active since she graduated from U of T in 2018. I suspect it's the same person. I called her to find out what was going on. I asked her if she could hear my singing loud enough to hear the words but she said she couldn’t. I asked her if it was as loud as the streetcars going by and she said that it wasn’t but that the difference is that the streetcars are white noise and they don’t wake her up. She said that it's gotten louder but then she admitted that she loved her bed right up against the wall through which the sound is coming. She said she had bought a bigger bed and that wall was the only place it would fit. I was surprised that she’s on the third floor and so my music is coming through the wall and her floor. She said it also comes in from the window and wondered if I could close my window while I was playing. I told her it’s too hot to close the window. I said I'd been doing this for twenty years and so it seems strange that suddenly people are complaining. I assume it’s because non-urban people with delicate suburban sensibilities are moving into the neighbourhood. She told me that the bottom line is that it’s against the law to make noise before 7:00. I told her that the best I could do was to put two mattresses against the wall but that it was going to kill my back to do that every day.

After I hung up I went online to look at the bylaw. It’s a new Toronto bylaw that was passed last year. It lists a lot of mechanical and construction noises but mentions nothing about music. There is a vague item listed as “persistent noise". If there is a complaint then inspectors come around with equipment to read the decibel levels. I really doubt that my playing would register as much of anything on their instruments but they might be able to get me with the persistent noise stipulation. I decided that rather than wrestling with mattresses I would try switching two of my morning activities. After song practice I always work on new songs, which involves playing guitar and singing sometimes but I do it at the computer and it’s not at a performance level volume. I decided to try doing the computer song work after yoga until 7:00 and then to do song practice. As far as I can tell, if I do my song practice after 7:00 it doesn’t matter how loud I am because I won't be breaking the law and she would have nothing to complain about.

I had the rest of my soufflé on a bagel for lunch.

In the afternoon I worked on writing about my Food Bank Adventure.

That night I had my last two maple sausages, a fried egg and a bagel with a beer while watching two episodes of Robin Hood.

In the first story a Master Perigrinas is a pilgrim just returned from the Holy Land and he is visiting with Robin. While he is there Robin has forbid his men to rob anyone, make travellers pay for dinner, nor even hunt the king's deer. When Marian hears of this she goes to find out what's going on. She is shocked to see Robin kissing Perigrinas’s ring until she learns that Perigrinas is really King Richard. Richard has a list of the traitor lords pledged to fight for his brother John. The main one is the Earl of Huntington and Richard gives Marian the mission of luring the earl to Sherwood so Richard can personally punish him. A summons is prepared for the earl to travel to John’s castle in Coventry and the route would take him through Sherwood. The royal seal is placed on the summons and since everyone thinks Richard is in a dungeon in Rome they will believe the seal was placed by John. Marian poses as Lady Charlotte, a favourite of Prince John, and successfully delivers the summons. The earl leaves but just before Marian can depart the sheriff arrives with a sealed message for the Earl from Prince John. When he learns that the earl has been summoned to travel through Sherwood he gets a bad feeling. He breaks the seal of the message and reads in John’s own handwriting, “The Devil is loose”. He recognizes immediately that it means King Richard is in England. Marian narrowly escapes without being recognized but the sheriff and his men go after her. The earl is stopped by Robin in Sherwood and escorted to King Richard. But Richard watches from a distance as Robin places the earl on trial for treason. Richard steps forward as a witness. The earl is sentenced to death but Richard says it’s unfitting for a peer of the realm to be hanged. Richard gives the earl a sword and engages him in combat, ultimately defeating and killing him.

In the second story a man who has been raising money in Nottingham for King Richard is charged with treason and sentenced to hang at sunset. In order to prevent Robin Hood and his men from attempting a rescue the city is closed to only deliveries from women. And so of course Robin and one of his men come to Nottingham in drag. Drag in medieval times wasn’t very convincing since there was no makeup but somehow they fool the guards. Once inside they make a delivery to the kitchen and then knock out the staff, changing clothes with them. Robin delivers a meal to the prisoner but the guard is onto him and locks him up. Robin and his man are brought before the sheriff and sentenced to hang at sunset beside the prisoner he’d tried to rescue. The justice of the king’s bench tells the sheriff that he will take Robin directly to Prince John in London. But the sheriff overrides his authority by declaring martial law. Robin and his man are taken to the death cell with the other prisoner but they manage to send a message out. A bow and arrows are hoisted up to his cell window. While the guard is sleeping Robin shoots an arrow with a line attached through the ring holing the key. The key slides down the line to his cell and they escape. Robin captures the sheriff, gags him and then locks him in a cell. They jump to the roof to a ready hay cart, change back into drag and escape through the gate.