Rhubarb!

           

            At the food bank on June 22^nd, I couldn’t stay in line because of all the smokers. Whenever one person finished their cigarette in front of me, someone else lit up behind me. It would have been better if they’d all just smoked at the same time. That way I could have at least had a break during their between fag intervals.

            A man leaning on one of the garbage bins was telling another a man by the door that he’d quit smoking a few years ago but had given up drinking years before that because it was too expensive and too much trouble.

            The man by the door asked, “Did you stop drinking before you stopped doing this?” He pointed at the crook of his own arm to indicate the place where one would inject a needle.

            The man by the garbage told him that he had kept on doing drugs for a while after he stopped drinking.

            After several minutes there was breathable air around my place in line, so I stepped back in. I was still reading the French tween book, “Klonk” by Francois Gravel and periodically consulting my Le Robert et Collins French-English dictionary. There was a tall, scraggly haired man about my age behind me who had been one of the smokers that had earlier caused me to step out of line. He was watching me, and finally commented, “A dictionary is a good thing to have!” I closed mine and showed him the cover, telling him that it was French. He nodded and said, “Even more important!” Then asked, “Do you speak French?” I answered that I could speak it well enough to almost understand a book for eleven year olds. He said, “Well that’s better than me!” Then he proceeded to tell me that when he’d been younger he’d been immersed in a francophone community in northern Quebec as a volunteer for Katimavik. He rattled off a few phrases that showed his pronunciation is far better than mine. It turns out that we have a few things in common. We’re both originally from New Brunswick and we both had a parent that was a schoolteacher.

            Later on when I came to pick up my food, the exact same items were on the top of the first set of shelves as there were the week before: pickles, artificially sweetened lemonade mix and olive oil spray. I took another can of the spray, even though I already had five of them and haven’t even tried it yet. But I’m almost finished with the big jug of canola oil that my upstairs neighbour gave me a few months ago, and I’ll be very surprised when I start using the spray if each can lasts very long.

The next shelf down still had lots of Triscuits, but also some Vegetable Thins and some Ryvita rye crisps with “a hint of chilli”. I took the crisps.

My helper gave me a handful of granola bars from the bottom shelf. I usually just keep those in my bag and eat them when I’m out late at night at open stages after missing dinner.

From the bean shelf I took the navy beans, which was the very last can that they had.

The cereal section had a choice of Apple Jacks or Shreddies, so I took the Shreddies.

There was dog food on the bottom of the last set of shelves, but no cat food this time. Fortunately I bought a big bag of kibble a while ago that will last for a while.

There were very slim pickings across the aisle where the refrigerated food is offered. There was a choice between a one-litre bag of chocolate milk or a litre of 2% milk. I took the white stuff.

            I skipped the bread this time around because I had some already.

            The vegetable lady gave me two tomatoes, three potatoes and a turnip. Then she asked if I wanted some rhubarb. I enthusiastically said that I did. She gave me the rest of what she had, which wasn’t much, but rhubarb is a rare treat in my adult life, though we had lots of it growing alongside the barn when I was a kid. I commented that it was the first time I’d seen rhubarb at the food bank. She told me that a lady had just brought it in.

Parkdale Amazon

A woman busting out all over

A woman busting out a lover

A woman wearing black all over

She was native or maybe part black, with curly hair

She was either drunk, stoned, bi-polar or empowered

in a black dress that seemed threatened by the body beneath.

The v-neck of her dress was under siege from cleavage

She was wearing fishnet stockings and high heels but she was tall already

An Amazon dream dressed up like a hooker

but if she was she wasn’t working

perhaps because she was too hot that night to whore it up

She walked across the street in full view of my window

and proceeded to hike her knee length dress

high up to her hip bone where she tied it.

Then she tied the other side until she’d made herself both cooler and hotter.

As she walked the sway of her hips threw the street off balance

It was hard for me to look at her and hard to look away

She looked like she was probably more used to wearing jeans,

had a presence that said she could hold her own in a fist fight with a man

and could melt the women around her with womanhood.

Her body was aggressive and unyielding

but willing to give in for money.

A short, skinny, masculine woman with a brushcut and a bicycle came up

They seemed to know each other and talked briefly

then they walked off together down Queen street.

I went to my other window and leaned out to watch her walk away

Her dress was knotted at each hi p but hanging down in the middle

Just enough to slap the imagination with magic indecencies.

My eyes followed her drunken sexy stiletto pivoting sway 

She reached out with her left arm and hooked it around the neck of her friend,

            then yanked her head into her shoulder and held her there as they walked away.

Black History and White Geography

           

            Tuesday, June 21^st was my last job of posing for the ladies of Studio 1181 in Mervish Village, since their space, the vintage video store above, most of the other buildings in the area and Toronto landmark, Honest Ed’s, will be demolished to make way for a major transformation of the neighbourhood starting in 2017. I first worked for the group back in the 80s when they were located in Leaside and their address actually was 1181. Their ages range from 77 to one of them pushing 100, so they’ve decided that they won’t be looking for another studio after leaving this one. Helen, the woman who does the booking is 88 years old and gorgeous! She was not there for my last gig because she was back home in England. Jane, the 77 year old baby of the group, is originally from Minnesota. She told me that Helen is planning to live in Spain. Apparently there is a colony of retired Brits living in Spain, much like the Canadian “Snowbirds” who live in Florida. The other Jane, also in her 80s has always said that mine is one of her favourite faces to draw and that she’ll want to hire me privately in the future. Lots of people have said that, but very few have followed through. Twenty dollars an hour with a three-hour minimum is a lot for one artist to pay. I told them that I was going to miss them because they’re one of the nicest, if not the nicest group around, and I’m not the only model who feels that way about them.

On the evening of Tuesday, June 21^st, I rode my bike under an endless sailing field of sleepy voluminous clouds on my way to Shab-e She’r.

I took my usual seat at the back. The air conditioning was on even though it was quite pleasant outside.

When Bänoo Zan went to the front to start taking names for the open stage, she announced that new people and minorities would be especially welcome. I told her that I was both new and a minority because there is no one else like me.

As Bänoo was walking past me I asked her if she could shut off the air conditioning, and she did. I could feel the results almost right away, but was hoping it would not get so warm that people would want it back on. It was feeling pretty nice, but opening the front door would have been a nice way to get some fresh air blowing into the room.

I chatted with Michael Fraser, and since he’s a high school teacher, I wondered if the academic year had finished yet. He told me, “After next week.” I asked if he’d be going anywhere for his holiday and he answered that he’d be visiting his sister in Massachusetts. I said that I have relatives all through New England and he shared that it’s the only part of the States he’s ever been. I informed him that while the accents may be different between the Maritimes, where I’m from, and New England, the speech is similar, so we don’t call the sisters of our parents “ants” like they do everywhere else in the States and Canada.

I noticed that the air conditioning seemed to have gone back on by itself.

At 19:00, Bänoo announced that we would begin the readings in two minutes. She was only three minutes in surplus of her promise.

To start, she gave her usual speech about Shab-e She’r being the most diverse open stage in Toronto, and gave a bit of history as to how it came about. Banoo landed in Toronto from Iran in 2010, and started going out to the available poetry events in the city. What she discovered was that literary readings in Toronto did not reflect the diversity that one sees on the streets of Hogtown, so she set about to try and build a better mirror. She told us that a few minutes before, some Iranians came, expecting us all to be speaking Persian, but left when they found out otherwise.

The first performer on the open stage was Andrea Thomson, who sang and recited a piece that she said was about the return of hope, optimism and empowerment. Her composition was intermixed with parts of the song, “What A Wonderful World” by Bob Thiele and George Weiss and she began singing the first verse followed by her own words – “ … They’ve invented a bathmat made of moss … We were trained into passivity … ostrich palooza … posting inconsequential statements on Facebook …” She sang the second verse of the song, then – “ … Maybe it’s a simple matter of alchemy … the word ‘possibility’ teasing our lips like raspberry … They’ve built bus benches into swings in Montreal … The lure of a heart suddenly too seductive to ignore …” She sang the third verse of the song, then – “ … We needed to stand stupid and hopeless … We have only just begun.” Andrea ended with the final verse of “What A Wonderful World”.

I’ve heard Andrea do the above piece before and researched some of the information she includes in the piece about progressive human friendly innovations that have come into our world recently. I had exposed one of her claims as misinformed, about a high-rise apartment building in Milano which she had said was “made” of trees and shrubs. The building in question is actually made of concrete, with extra large balconies serving as little parks for each dwelling. I noticed that Andrea had changed the piece this time to make her information about that building more accurate. I don’t know if corrected it on her own or if she’d actually read my review.

In reference to Andrea’s mention of bus stops made into swings in Montreal, I’ll have to once again be a researching killjoy and point out that this is not the case. The swings are a popular art installation called “21 Balançoires” on the Promenade Des Artistes. They are only set up from late spring until the early fall, during the festival season in Montreal. Because they are near the Place Des Arts metro station, some outsiders have gotten the notion that they are bus stops. But the busses stop across the busy street and if you wait for them on the swings you might miss your bus.

            Bänoo declared that she always feels especially blessed when former features like Andrea Thomson come back to Shab-e She’r.

            Next on the open mic was Valérie Kaelin, and from her excellent poem – “Original skin … we each sleuth out the largest organ … Here I am … wound, split-boned, sequined and fringed … It knows only its knowing … against foolish wanderlust … The original skin … it means well … the presence of animal … inclement weather … It’s hovering, radiant hand … The mind streaming … loneliness the common enemy of its heart … From delegate tracings bitten by the cold winds it acquires the furrows … survival … needful … finds metaphors … wild creatures to domesticate … Worried skin … in this arises the sanctuary laws … to dress our yearnings …”

            After Valerie was Diana Manole, who informed us that George Elliott Clarke, the poet laureate of Canada, had selected one of her poems for his Poem of the Month Gallery.

            The poem that Diana shared with us was called “Deflowering English” – “With my rough accent … my chronic inability to remember the place for modifiers … A double act of rape and enslavement … my syllables copulate with yours … our thoughts and accents contaminate English … But how can a word ignore its own accent … Revirginising the English language for a redemption we are not ready for.”

            Then we had a story poem called “A Mirror” from Hari Kumar – “It was found in an Egyptian tomb … I put it on the ceiling to watch myself lying bare … He’s so beautiful … He looks at me dreamily and closes his eyes… I feel his lips on mine, currents shake my body … His fragrance is mine, his taste is mine … The night lights up, the air ignites … We erupt inside each other … Now in each other’s arms, sweetly spent … I see him stretch in the mirror above … He mimics my love … his face … waves of anguish … The glass shatters … We will be one again …and in the sliver that stabs my heart I see his bleeding eyes …”

            When Harry was done, Banoo took a moment to once again sing the praises of diversity at poetry readings by saying, “If you only make sense to people like you, you are not making sense.” She also reminded people that since Shab-e She’r does not receive any government grants, it survives by donations. She said that anything under $3,000 would be accepted, and anything over that, come and talk to us.

            Next on the open stage was Shagufta, who said that her poem was based on research on South Asian women receiving a virginity test upon entering the U.K.- “The feel of his latex gloves as he opens me to the cold table … I stare at the ceiling … my legs flopped … The stinking smell of lubricant … A light snakes round and pours into me … Oh, my secret snatched … Speculum … I am nothing more than my flesh … My heart … my skull … heavy as chalk … Status confirmed … I remain open … humiliated … I think instead of my mother.”

            I was sceptical about this having happened, first of all because it didn’t make sense to me why British immigration services would give a damn whether or not a woman from South Asia was a virgin. But a little research online showed that it did happen just as Shagufta said, except that it would have been helpful if she’d clarified that it happened in the 1970s and that the practice was terminated before the end of that decade. So the story behind this fucked up turn of events is that most South Asians moving to the U.K. back then needed to apply for a visa in order to do so, but for some reason the Home Office waived this requirement for unmarried women as long as they were scheduled to be married within three months. In order to prevent women that were already married from cheating the system, some genius with the Home Office had the naïve notion that South Asian women do not have sex before they are married and so a virginity test would detect any women that were trying to get a visa under false pretences. A historically deeper degree of ignorance was behind the very concept that the detecting of a torn hymen during a virginity test provided any proof at all that a woman was not a virgin, since many activities other than sex throughout the lives of girls and women can cause their hymens to tear. Most of these tests were given in India or Pakistan before the women left for Britain but some happened at local hospitals shortly after arrival and even some right there at Heathrow airport.

            Following Shagufta was Nick Micelli, singing acapella a song about the participation of Irish immigrants in the U.S. Civil War, called “Paddy’s Lamentation”, which he said research has shown was written by an unknown Canadian composer – “It’s by the hush me boys … listen to poor Paddy’s narration. I was by hunger pressed … so I took a thought I’d leave the Irish nation … Take my advice, to America I’ll have ye’s not be going. There is nothing here but war … and I wish I was at home in dear old Dublin … When we got to Yankee land they shoved a gun into our hands, saying ‘Paddy, you must go and fight for Lincoln!’ …”

            As Bänoo was introducing the first feature, Michael Fraser, someone reeking of several days of tobacco smoke came and sat beside me.

            Michael read from his latest book of poems: “To Greet Yourself Arriving”. He took the title from a line in Derek Walcott’s poem, “Love After Love”. Each poem in Michael’s book is an homage to a different Black figure.

            Michael began with a poem inspired by Neil Degrasse Tyson – “Sometimes I think this never happened … I know we are all living parallel lives … Hitler rules this blue orb … When we were single cells … when we were stardust … surprised to hear the barefaced brownboys wonder within …”

            From a poem inspired by Howling Wolf – “I can hear the train coming … Mama left before I could spell my name … A dead man tuned my first guitar … Hell is a mama that never wanted you.”

            From a poem inspired by Gil Scott Heron – “Blazing … winter in America … Pure pulse … you know he’s the real … What’s going down … Power to the people … You stand in the shade of his blow-out fro … You have to keep on keeping on … The revolution will not be televised.”

            I never quite understood the expression, “the revolution will not be televised”. Even before television, as long as there have been journalists, they have covered revolutions, and so of course the revolution will be televised.

            From a poem inspired by Frederick G. Douglass – “Yesterday I found the person I used to be … Words carried me away from him and multiplied in my leathered hands …as his thin illiterate memory left nothing …”

            From a poem inspired by Cilia Cruz – “ … The sutured swell … the two-toned background singers … the oak or amber beads … the pewter mic … the plumed papaya queen … the capered feet … the bass rumble … the half-pint whose smile lights the sun.”

            From a poem inspired by Barack Obama – “ … His voice the cleansing of space … He refuses to swing at England’s red face … The world expects miracles … No one could possibly be from where they claim … like freed slaves scooting north …”

            From a poem entitled “Underground” – “Crickets squeaked wings … Even near the border they were always one cough away … When they crossed into Ontario, Africans knee deep in the vomit of snow … They dreamed of cotton … running barefoot into morning.”

            Michael then read a poem inspired by Joe Frazier, but first explained that he didn’t celebrate Ali because Ali had used colourism against Frazier – “You’d have loved to drop Ali … You insisted on calling Clay by his earthen name … Cameras and tape recorders came towards you like locusts … Beyond the ropes, men are broken.”

            Michael’s final poem was inspired by the Black Panthers – “Because Watts was burning … blasting my Jim Crow past … Let the safety click speak up in public … Perched on painted lady porches … Ozzie and Harriet time … Our soldiers felled in Vietnam … I couldn’t choose bus seats … I was half time in law offices … My children walking coatless to winter schools … I linked up with Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis … clipped the magnum to my side and finally decided to wake the hell up.”

            The last few times that I’ve heard Michael Fraser read, he shared poems based on research into African Americans who were conscripted to serve the United States as soldiers a few hundred years ago. My problem with that book was that he was too far from the subject matter to be able to conjure up and command any enticing imagery to give power to the poems. This night’s reading was a little closer to home, but still far from the watermark Michael had set with his first book of poems that talked about his own life. Those poems were tactile and beautiful because they were about things that touched him on a deep level. Michael is a schoolteacher and a family man. I’m sure that he’s being touched every day by real experiences that could make for much better poems than those that are derived from research.

            There was to be the usual break, but first there was a raffle for a small package of books. After a few numbers were called by Kate Marshall Flaherty of people that didn’t answer because they must have left, someone of course eventually won the prize.

            After the break, as she has tended to do lately, Bänoo had one of the open stage readers serve as a sacrificial lamb to help to re-gather the attention that had been broken by the break, so the feature wouldn’t have to work as hard. She chose Ali Ibrahimi for this task, who read a poem entitled “Truth and Reconciliation” – “Platelets repurposed … schoolhouse dons … moving lawns … Tomorrow we will see truth again …”

            The second and last feature of the night was Soraya Peerbaye.

            She began with poems inspired by her trip to Antarctica. She informed us that when one goes to Antarctica one is asked not to pocket anything.

            From her first poem – “Coal eyes albatross … bones hollowed for flight … Icebergs … the continent opens its mouth … syllables of snow … blue, luminous … spectrum sharpened to shadow of mirror … a white room asylum …”

            Soraya’s second poem was called “Throat Song” – “Harmonic intervals of cloud … Carcasses ransacked … broken into eggs in the shadows below … a droning undertone … frozen, unable to rot.”

            She told us that she went to Deception Island where there was once a whaling station that closed in 1929. The carcases were abandoned and the current landscape looks like Mars – “ … Whalebone … boat hull … on an island named Deception … I press my hand to each body … Even decay wants to live … The mining of a living ore … Sea lulls bone … Rail of wind and rusted lungs … Constellation of a holocaust and still beauty … A whale marked by a flag and left floating … Wash their hands in warm blood …”

            In the second half of Soraya’s set, she read for us from a series of poems based on the gang assault and murder of Reena Virk in British Columbia – “ … Salt marshes … throats and the breasts of birds … There had been a tumult of rumour … He testified how her jeans slid from her hips … amidst exotic blackberry … stems blackening … She started mumbling words … wanting something to catch … In Warren’s testimony she drowned … Two girls … One standing … He stood on the shore … saw Kelly raise her hand … Smooth ligament scars … Her face pressed to the estuary floor … floods her mouth, her nostrils … I’ll make her eat her words … How could he see from the moonlight glimmering on the water … Kelly’s jacket … She said her jacket reeked like blood, like rotten fish … The edge of the hand brought down like a hatchet blow … Pressure against soft palate … the tongue in the wave …”

            From “Slow Time” – “Here the force is ice … A series of shadow lakes … pine cones holding themselves close … salt lines on tree trunks …”

            From “Stones” – “I will take anything that is given … What do the pebbles tell you … That it became harder … Watery night against her open eyes … clutch of tongue between her teeth …”

            Soraya’s final poem was “Lagoons and Lakes” – “I liked diving … a glass of Fanta cracked my lips … licked the fine, bitter dust … Here it was sweetwater … tilted and teardropped …”

            Soraya Peerbaye’s poems about Antarctica were some of the most inspired writing presented at Shab-e She’r that evening. They created atmosphere and tactility; they trembled with the emotion of the experience of being there. Her set of poems about Reena Virk’s murder suffered from the same distance as Michael Fraser’s poems about famous strangers. She couldn’t call up any strong images because of course she wasn’t there to mine them from the moments of the event.

            Bänoo immediately returned to the open mic, starting with Anushka.

            From Anushka’s poem – “I speak for my grandmother … spit revolution … for the dissolution of self … I will speak in my mother’s tongue … This tongue will go dry … for the sister beaten to death by her brothers for wanting a divorce … We have been silent for too long.”

            Next was David Bridges, who informed us that it was National Aboriginal Day. His poem was called “Be Cause” – “Orlando ordeal … because you slaughter those disgracing your fanatical cause … This is the American way … as guns and roses grow freely … Counter insurgency of compassion … May the black rose know the white rose has no shadow.”

            After David came Rula Kahil, who told us that Banoo was going to kill her, but because she has a birthday coming, she had written a “Poem for Banoo” – “Curly hair … innocence that resides in the layers of your silence … a presence that is constantly present … The friends we are in between lands …”

            Then Banoo invited me to the stage where there is no stage. I read part two of my translation of Boris Vian’s “Un Coeur D’or” – “ … Very gently, Candy Breeze lifted the razor he had been holding and passed the sharpened blade over the taut, white knuckles of the murderer …  One by one, the tendons of his fingers snapped like the over tightened strings of a guitar, and with each cut, there resounded a feeble note …”

            Following me was Megan Hutton, who told us that she represented some kind of diversity in that she is a 70 year old lesbian that has been with the same woman for 31 years. She said she sat through the Vietnam war and has been a playwrite, but now that she is older she composes poetry. She shared two poems.

            The first was entitled, “Primal Desire” – “Carefully folded into that interior you call self … you roll under my tongue … Darkness hides your armour … the push and pull that is you … fall to the earth with confusion … I wonder if your silence is a language.”

            Megan explained that her next poem described an encounter between a  down and out man and a couple of uptight Forest Hill lesbians. She called “Fast Eddy” – “My eyes dance on his words … a dishevilled stranger … The risk of opening up to two unlikely participants with matching purses … he asked them what day is Monday … He remembers his place … My drinking, my downfall … left over from a Christmas he can’t remember … warn, peeling and chapped … Recites The Cremation of Sam McGee … believing for a time in a future he can still imagine …”

            Before inviting Alexia to read, Bänoo took a moment to thank her team and said that her nightmare is not having one.

            Alexia told us that this was her first time reading her poetry in public and that she is a student in Andrea Thompson’s spoken word class at OCADU.

            Her poem was called All At Once” – “It doesn’t happen all at once … Your mother hands you a pad … Am I a woman now … It’s just your period … You take her offering into the washroom … the pad unfolds like a lily blooming … you will bleed into this whiteness … You are not allowed to speak of it … There are models in commercials who do this really well in white bikinis … You bear your period like a champ … You must repent … You must collect the red brightness of it … offer it to the moon … Keep secret stains behind the nails lest you forget your mother was wrong.”

            Next was Geoff Lepper, who read a poem he’d written for a friend who is terminal, and he cried through most of his reading – “Perhaps we are all like icicles hanging … She was a child of life … More than tables, she walked into walls … People looked at her and wondered … People don’t simply walk through walls … She’d had every intention of walking through walls … Her spirit still dictated that she walk through walls … Life is much more than being at home, full of tears … Those who thought of her as having poor sight … This woman of joy gave all who knew her positive spirit.”

            After Jeff, was Mind the Gap, who asked if we wanted her to cheer us up. I think that the answer was yes. She interspersed her poem by singing the refrain from the REM song “Losing My Religion” – “That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion … Come into my office … I’d offer you a seat at my desk … I am amused … We can have cigars in the armchairs … I want you to see my paintings … That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion … So please come into my office.”

            Then we heard from Kate Marshal Flaherty, who read a poem she’d written about Norval Morriseau’s painting, “Skinwalker” –“ … I don’t have the word for story in Ojibway … The deeper thin lichen teal … sunsets like copper pots … Your skinwalker … I hide under its hide … Miigwetch the only word I know.”

            The final reader on the open stage was Sarah Flogan, with a poem called “The Rash” – “The ice cold of the iron bars … She is pinned, mute … She summons air … arches her back … puts on a sweater to warm her belly, gathering her strength … she steps forward.”

            After helping put the chairs away I chatted with Cy Strom and Natasha Khan. Natasha had only just arrived. She asked if I’d done a song this time on the open stage. I told her that I’d read a story. As I recall, Cy described it for her as having been about a murderous criminal who meets his end at the hands of a child that is even worse.

Stories That Are Hard To Swallow

           

            Monday, June 20^th was a breezy, sultry evening with black clouds bleeding in the sunset light.

            When I arrived at the Tranzac, Ben Bootsma was standing outside trying to decide whether or not to stay.

            When I went inside to put my name on the list there was a trio in the overly air conditioned Southern Cross room playing meditative jazz music and all the tables were full, so I went back outside to tune up. Ben was still there and we chatted for a while.

            He asked me what I’ve been doing and I talked about my adaptations of French songs and about how many phrases, metaphors and plays on words can’t be directly translated and so I have to come up with my own. For instance, one of Serge Gainsbourg’s lines would be directly translated as, “I want to play the daughter of the air, leave my cap in the locker room.” The daughter of the air is a character from a French fairy tale that I’ve never heard told in English. She was kidnapped by the Earth but she escaped by flying away. In an English version of the song, no one would have understood the reference, so I wrote, “I want to break this cage and fly, just leave my monkey suit behind”, which not only refers to the ticket puncher’s uniform, but also his body, which ties in with later references in the song to death.

            I offered the opinion that Serge Gainsbourg was a better songwriter than Bob Dylan, but probably not better than Leonard Cohen. Ben said that I’m the only man he’s ever met that thinks that Leonard Cohen is a better songwriter than Bob Dylan, though he’s talked to several women that would agree.

            Sara Greene was the host this time around and she got the open stage rolling at about a quarter after the official start time of 22:00. Ben stuck around specifically because Sarah wanted him to play piano for her during her two songs.

            From Sarah’s first song – “In the night time the feeling’s right … guilty in the morning light … You were only mine in the night time … and if you’re gone before I’m gone, I’ll say he’s the one for whom I wrote this song.”

            From her second song, which she has played many times before – “ … It’s funny how our hair turns grey cause we are children anyway … My lover’s smile is like the sky, it opens up and don’t ask why …”

            Since Ben was already at the piano, Sarah asked him to do something of his own. He was reluctant because he had not signed up. She coaxed the audience to encourage him to play, and so he did.

            From one of Ben Bootsma’s newer songs – “On the most lonely night … the reasons that were common sense and the memory of your confidence … Your holy walls are closing in … How could you know that the people you chose are the same as the ones you let down …” The melody had a Tom Waitsian feel.

            The first official open stage performer of the night was Stavros, who brought with him an out of the ordinary violin that was not only of a slightly different shape than usual but it also had frets like a guitar. He said that it’s a violin for guitar players. He also brought his looping pedal. He said he would be doing two instrumentals: the first one “Celty” and the second “Arabicy”.

            Stavros began strumming the violin like a ukulele for a while, and then he snapped his foot down on the loop pedal and picked up a bow to play the violin on top of the repeated strumming.

            For his second song he played the violin like a lead guitar, then began to strum again. It was a much more rhythmic piece. Again he used the pedal, bowed over the strumming, then snapped the pedal to turn it off and finished with just the bow on the violin.

            After Stavros came Steven Lewis, with help on slide guitar from Robert Labell. I noticed that Robert was using his video camera to record this performance as well.

            Steven told us that his first song was an old original called “509” – “ … Always moving, that train … past the foothills where the prairies lay … 509 whistle’s wailing … big black smoke is rolling steady … That’s Alberta up ahead.

            Steven’s second song was called “Beautiful Day” – “ … On a warm summer’s night the sleepy moon slips away, pulling night into day …”

            Next was Robert Labell, who began with his mandolin. He told us that he got the idea for his first piece from listening to Ry Cooder’s adaptation of Johnny Cash’s song “Hey Porter” as a blues song.

            When Robert met Ry Cooder at his Massey Hall concert, he told him about certain records of his that were cherished parts of his collection but he was embarrassed to find out that Ry Cooder had never released those recordings and that Robert was in possession of bootlegs.

            For his second number, Robert switched to guitar and did another song based on a Ry Cooder adaptation, this time in country blues format, of Chuck Berry’s “Thirteen Question Method”, which outlines Berry’s system for having fun on a date, though I noticed that there are only twelve items on the list not all of them are in question form. Chuck Berry wrote some great lyrics but this wasn’t his finest hour – “ … Question number 1: Let’s have some fun … 2: What to do? … 3: Will you dine and dance with me? … 4: Out the door? … 5: I want you to know jive … 6: How long to get fixed? … 7: Should I pick you up at a quarter to eleven? … 8: Is it a date? … 9: Where to dine? … 10: Can we get in? … 11: It’ll be just like heaven… 12: When we’re by ourselves …”

            I looked up the original song later on and found it to be a fun and funky little number.

            I checked the time when Robert was done, and saw that the first three open stage performers took up the first hour of the open stage.

            Then Robert Labell stayed on stage to help out John P. with his set. When John sat down in front of the microphone he took off his glasses and set them down near his feet. Sarah, a bespectacled person herself, was concerned, and reminded John to be careful not to step on his lenses.

            From John’s first song, which was kind of an acoustic rock and roll number – “I know I look like I’m very much alive, but I died, get a shovel out and bury me now … I know I look like I’m kind of a ghost … you are a parasite and I am the host …”

            From John’s second piece, a sixties style folk song – “ … I finally got to New York on a freighter from Peru … I’ve been searching high, I’ve been searching low, there are so many ways your life can go … I finally got out of Boston, made my way to Portland, Maine … I’ve been all over this old world, it’s a way of getting lost …”

            I followed John, starting by saying that I was going to do a song about a musical instrument that I’d never heard played at the Tranzac and wondered if anyone could guess what that was. Some people named some obscure instruments. I hinted that it would probably show up more at open stages in Quebec and so Eric Sedore jokingly called out, “The French horn!” Finally it was Stavros who guessed that I was talking about the accordion. He added that he’d played the accordion at an open stage a few nights before.

            I sang, “Accordion”, which is my translation of a Serge Gainsbourg song – “God knows life is vicious for any street musician whose wife and companion is an accordion. Who helps him to get by, sits with him when he’s high? Not you, me or anyone but his accordion! In accord with the chords, all tune in and turn on, then afford what you horde to the accordion …” I fumbled a bit with some of the chords, but it seemed to go over well. Stavros said, “Hmmm!” when I was done. Eric asked if it was a translation and John asked if the plays on words were my own, which they were.

            My second choice was my own song, “Love In Remission” – “The pouring rain makes the grey walls glisten, the drops on the barbs of the wire make a bijoux charm. She’s all in black, except for her ammunition, that’s wrapped softly round her in a quiet shade of alarm …”

            Sarah told the next performer that she had a new name for his act: “The Story of Isaac”, referring of course to the Leonard Cohen song.

            From Isaac Bonk’s first song – “Oh Henry James was a banker, he built his towers high … One day when Henry dies, he will be judged … he descends upon the grimy steps to hell …This story’s just to tell you that wealth aint all it seems …”

            From Isaac’s second song – “Here’s a story about a boy who died far too young … Thomas was born a miner’s son and he was fed almost every day but his mother on her deathbed lay … Thomas would play with the neighbour girls, they would run and shout and twirl … Then came a letter closing the mine … His father cried for a month or so, for he knew their food was low. They wouldn’t make it through the snow … When winter came the food was gone and poor Thomas died … Before he left for that dusty road, he buried Thomas with the neighbour girl … He buried his son, just ten years old...”

            After introducing Eric Sedore, Sarah announced that Eric had just done his first gig. It was a house concert at the home of Cassandra Rutherford, who used to manage The Tranzac. The concert was in Barrie. I called out that I lost my virginity in Barrie, which got a laugh. A big guy with a white beard across the room said, “We can’t top that!”

            Eric decided to do a couple of covers this time.

            He started with Bruce Cockburn’s “Festival of Friends” – “An elegant song won’t hold up long when the palace falls and the parlour’s gone … Some of us live and some of us die, someday god’s going to tell us why … Black snake highway, sheet metal ballet …”

            His second cover was “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song” by Jeffrey Lewis – “Walking up 23^rd Street I was tired and alone. It was late; my housemate would be asleep when I got home. The sign ahead, glowing red, said ‘The Chelsea Hotel’ … Two guys, maybe Gay, wearing Reber type suits, and a girl wearing glasses who looked kind of cute … She was trying to describe a song I knew well: the Leonard Cohen song about the Chelsea Hotel … How the song was outrageous and that’s when I got uncharacteristically courageous … I turned and I faced her and I said, ‘Leonard Cohen?’ just like that … She looked at me with her spectacled eyes and said, ‘See? I told you!” to the two other guys … Usually women right off the bat don’t find me that great, but here we were laughing like we could really relate … The guys were more into each other, at least that’s how it seemed to me, so I heard the faint knocking of opportunity … Keep the sad truth in mind as I tell this to you that we only talked for a minute or two. I never got her name and she never got mine, but in those couple of minutes we had a pretty good time … That line about getting a blow job that Leonard sings, she said it made her want to do naughty things. Right about then I should have asked if she knew what the Chelsea charged if we got a room for two, but I didn’t and I know I’m a schmuck, don’t you doubt it. The only thing I did was write this stupid song about it … Life doesn’t work out the way it does in old songs. That’s why we write new ones, to say what really goes on … The next time you’re feeling kind of lonesome and blue, just think that someone somewhere might be singing about you … She could have been singing about me. Probably not, but it could be.”

            Eric had been the last name on the last, but while he was performing a couple more people signed up.

            The first was Trey, who began with an acapella cover of “You Know I’m No Good” by Amy Winehouse – “Meet you downstairs in the bar and hurt, your rolled up sleeves and your skull t-shirt. You say, ‘What did you do with him today?’ and sniff me out like Tanqueray … You tear me down like Roger Moore …” Trey vocally beat-boxed the instrumental break … you notice the little carpet burn, my stomach drops and my guts churn …”

            Trey’s second choice was “Aint No Sunshine” by Bill Withers. Trey is a very good singer but he’s a bit of a ham and goes a bit baroque on the notes.

            The final performer of the night was Ali, but he pronounced it like “alley” rather than “ahlee” and so I didn’t realize at first that he was saying a Muslim name. I asked if it was as in “alleyway” but Sarah quickly said, “No!” Finally I got it.

            Ali mentioned that he writes songs but that he was going to do a couple of covers. Stavros urged him to do some of his own.

            His first song was called “Blue Nights” – “No one else can help me with this pain … I’m not tired and I got nowhere to be …”

            His second composition was a reggae song, which he sang in a fake Jamaican accent – “You struck me just like lightning and I was quite concerned the way you burned …”

            Eric and Sarah were chatting after the open stage. I asked Eric if he knew who the woman was in Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel”. He said he’d heard that it was Janis Joplin. Sarah said she’d thought that was a myth. I told her that Cohen had said so in a live concert and later felt bad about name-dropping. The story he told was that he was wandering the halls of the Chelsea Hotel and he saw Janis Joplin looking lost. He asked her, “Are you looking for someone?” She said, “I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson”, to which Cohen responded, “You’re in luck!” Sarah asked, “So Cohen told her that he was Kristofferson?” I told her, that I was sure she knew what Kristofferson looked like already. Sarah seemed disappointed.

            I walked with Eric to Bathurst. We chatted on the corner for a while. He told me that, upon my recommendation, he’d watched the Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire, but had found it kind of depressing. He also said that he’s been keeping a daily journal for the sake of improving his writing. He wants to write more stories. I recommended Kurt Vonnegut’s collection of stories, “Welcome to the Monkeyhouse” and also any stories by Donald Barthelme, but especially “The Balloon”, about a giant balloon that appears above New York City and how the New Yorkers interact with it.

            We both had to work the next morning, so we said goodnight.

Connie

           

            On the hot Sunday evening of June 19^th, while riding west along Bloor Street I noticed that there was still some kind of festival going on at Christie Pits, as there had been the day before. It turns out that it’s the Inti Raymi summer solstice festival, put on by Toronto’s Latin community.

            When I got to Avenue Road I found that Bloor was closed to traffic from Avenue Road to Bay Street as part of the Yorkville Exotic Car show. I had to walk my bike to Bay before I could ride again. So much for seeing how much of Leaside I could explore if I give myself 47 minutes to ride there.

            It’s definitely harder work riding up Yonge to St Clair than it is going out to he Danforth. There’s a lot less competition from other cyclists though.

            I rode along Sutherland from Bayview to Midland. The grid I’m exploring is shaped more like a spider web than the normal rectangular arrangements. Every eastbound street takes a sharp turn after the angled section of Midland and runs north parallel to Midland’s northbound end.

            I watched the first episode of Hawaiian Eye. I remember seeing some of them when I was a kid but didn’t remember much other than that it was sort of a Hawaiian rip off of 77 Sunset Strip. There was nothing outstanding about the first show. What struck me as extremely unrealistic was that this private detective agency would have so much influence on the police, so much so that beat cops would treat the guys like they were their superiors. The show had 60s cutie Connie Stevens as a nightclub singer who sang as if she were enclosed in an echo chamber.

Wild West Batman

           

            Since I first got Windows 7 a couple of years ago, my computer, upon restarting sometimes, changes the display size for everything but Microsoft Word periodically back and forth between a larger format and a smaller one. I suspect that it’s the result of changes made by Windows updates. I prefer the smaller format and the one good outcome that came from Windows 10 hijacking my computer a few weeks ago was that it seemed to fix everything into the smaller format. When I got up on Saturday though, I found that everything had restarted due to an update and it was back in the large format. Grrrr!

On Saturday I took advantage of a very warm day to do my laundry in the bathtub and to hang it out on the deck. There was a little less room on the railing though because my neighbour had had the same idea and hung his comforter out to dry. I have one spare sheet that I washed recently because my stinky cat, Jonquil had been lying on it near the laundry basket. I got the smell off but it was still covered with cat hair. I tried washing it again this time but the hair remains. I think the only thing that might get it off is the rotation of a Laundromat dryer. It’s not that important because it’s just an extra sheet, so I guess it can wait until fall.

When I went for my bike ride, some SUV made a right turn without signalling after the light changed and could have clipped me if I hadn’t been aware.

I went to Yonge Street, rode north to St Clair, east to Englewood, north to Moore and then east into Leaside. Once I was past Bayview I started exploring the streets south of Moore and later Southvale. There was a big complex of identical, small apartment buildings that looked more like they were part of a community college campus. I cycled to Millwood and then back the way I came.

I listened to David Bowie’s second album, “David Bowie” and then part of his third, “Space Oddity”. The quality of the songwriting and the production improved with each of these albums. Space Oddity was the first of his songs that had electric guitar in a rock arrangement. From the second album, I particularly liked “We Are Hungry Men” and from “Space Oddity” besides the title song, I liked “Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly”.

            I finished watching the first season of Have Gun – Will Travel. I won’t bother downloading the second season but I enjoyed the character of Paladin. He’s sort of like a wild west Batman in the sense that there doesn’t seem to be much that he doesn’t know how to do. On two occasions he acted as a lawyer, he has an impossible amount of knowledge, he’s the president of an exclusive club in San Francisco, and the list goes on. Somehow he has gotten rich as a soldier of fortune, but in the episodes in which good people hire him, he hardly ever takes their money.

Don't Be An Asshole

           

            Another Friday of no students coming to my yoga class at PARC. If this happens next week I am turning in my fob. I am for the most part hoping that will be the outcome. There is writing I could get done on Fridays rather than wasting my time sweeping the floor for no one.

            On my way home from PARC, I was passing between a parked truck and traffic, and didn’t feel confident to pedal through the narrow passageway, so I scooted myself along with my right foot. A twenty-something cyclist riding a trick bike behind me called out, “You don’t know how to ride!” Once we were both through, I turned and told him not to be rude. He told me to get out of the way. I said, “Don’t be an asshole! You’ll find it will help you get along with people better!” “Okay” he responded indifferently.

            That evening I rode through very hot air out to the end of Donlands and then crossed the bridge over the Don Valley to where it turns into Millwood Road. I wanted to explore the next street that went west and that was Redway Road. It turned out to be the very long driveway of a Loblaws in the middle of nowhere with “all lanes open”.

            I rode north to Southvale and headed west. I didn’t explore any side streets along the way, but was rather marking my next route, since it wouldn’t make sense to get there via the Danforth. Southvale turned into Moore before it crossed Bayview. I followed Moore to the end and went down to St Clair. It’s nice on a hot day to shoot down the hill from St Clair along Yonge Street and to feel the breeze in my face.

            At Bloor and Bay, the woman with the titanic voice and the artificial flowers in her hair was scatting to beat the band, only without a band. She’s a very good singer.

            Just after walking my bike across Bay Street to head south, I saw a very hot middle-aged woman walking in a tight knee-length dress of see-through white lace. I actually considered taking a ride around the block to get another look, but I decided it was too late and she might already have gone in somewhere with the couple that accompanied her.

            I’ve recently downloaded the complete studio discography of David Bowie. I listened to his first album, “1966” and it’s interesting because it has a very 60s sound while at the same time being distinctly Bowie, with songs like “I Dig Everything”.