Taco Bowls

            On Saturday I rode through the after snow fondue to the food bank but had to walk my bike into the driveway because I guess the backs of buildings are exempt from the city bylaw that requires the laying down of salt. On looking that up though, I see it’s not true, since all driveways are supposed to be cleared by the property owner. The driveway that the Parkdale food bank shares with the other tenants is cleared enough for vehicles but not for pedestrians. I guess someone could report whoever the landlord is in this regard and they’d have to pay a $100.00 fine. He or she might have to fork out a lot more if someone hurts their self on the ice and decides to sue.

            There were quite a few more people gathered than the week before now that all the groceries bought with the end of January social services cheques had been consumed. There was also a line-up this time consisting of people as well as shopping carts. The tall French Canadian guy was standing at the back of the line and confirmed for me that he had been the last one to arrive before me. I stepped in behind him and he immediately started complaining about the people that put their carts in line and then leave. Shortly though the conversation moved to the more pleasant subject of the food bank’s move to the basement of PARC in less than two months. He kept on saying they would be moving in March though I already knew it would be April. At first I thought he was saying that they will close down at this location in March and take a month to get set up at the new place, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. I didn’t have the confidence though to try to talk to him in my limited French in order to clarify. He said that the main reason they were moving is because they pay $3000.00 a month at this location while at PARC it was going to be free. He claimed Chinese people ran the food bank at PARC before, but I corrected him that it had been a Korean church

            A few people ahead of me was a tall and very large woman who looked like she might be from Africa. At one point she turned around and I saw that she had a strikingly beautiful face. Then she smiled at me and I smiled back, before lowering my eyes back to my book. I was reading a poem about Charley Pride by Wayde Compton that had a couple of really good lines: “There is a Funkadelic Parliament; Charley Pride is Guy Fawkes. Begot in Mississippi, upriver from the blues, born under an ambivalent sign …”

            Angie came out and was having a cigarette while sitting in one of the chairs near the door. She called down the line and said to someone that they could go in and get a coffee and some cherry pie. Then she said to someone ahead of me, “No, the guy behind you!” and she was looking in my direction I turned to look behind me and saw no one then she laughed and said, “Okay, smart guy!” and I realized she’d been speaking to me. It kind of made me feel dumb to be called a smart guy about something I wasn’t aware of.

There were quite a few people smoking this time, so I stepped out of line a few times. It was those times that I could see that the line behind me was getting very long.

When they started letting people in there was a hassle right away because of a woman who’d come early to leave her cart near the front of the line but then had gone away only to return just before the line began to move. Because of her lack of consideration she had been given a later number than her cart’s position in line and she was very angry about it. She raged very loudly in her West Indian accent for several minutes about how unfair it was. Dwayne, the door person kept telling her to look at the sign that says that if one leaves the line they will lose their spot. She retorted, “I don’t care about any sign!”

I asked Dwayne about the new space at PARC because even though I volunteered there for three years I had no idea how to get to the basement. At first I thought he was telling me that there’s a door to the basement just inside the main entrance but I think that he meant the door west of the main entrance, which also leads to the Tool Library. He informed me that it’s a much bigger space and so there would be no more lining up in the rain, snow and cold. I inquired as to whether they would eliminate the two-stage system of lining up for numbers, then leaving to come back and wait again to have them called. He imparted that they hadn’t worked out exactly how they were going to manage things at the new location but he speculated that there would just be one waiting period instead of two.

I got number 28 and went home for about 45 minutes. I ate a bowl of Raisin Bran but decided not to make any coffee because I knew I would not be able to finish it before leaving and I didn’t fancy drinking it cold later on.

When I got back to the driveway they were just calling for numbers 11 to 20, but almost immediately started calling numbers after 20 because some people hadn’t come back yet.

The prematurely white haired volunteer who drives the food bank van went out to the vehicle, started it and was idling it in the driveway. It smelled like the machine runs on propane and after a while the fumes were getting pretty noxious. A guy that was sitting by the door started shouting for him to either go or turn it off. He finally did shut it down, got out and walked back to the food bank but when he was opening the door the guy that had been shouting asked, “Whada they call you, ‘Meathead’?” He turned to give him a dirty look as he was stepping inside. Just after he’d turned away, the guy in the chair suddenly lurched up halfway to a standing position to indicate that he was ready to scrap and then sat back down.

Once I was inside and seated, Betina, one of my former yoga students at PARC, arrived. I know that she used to work at the food bank before I started going there but she still comes around there from time to time. I got the impression though that she might be still involved with the food bank on some organizational level since, when she started chatting with me about the move she told me, “We haven’t worked out whether we’ll have to close for a while during the move.”

It looked like they had at least three more volunteers than usual guiding clients from shelf to shelf. A guy that I’d never seen there before called my number.

The only thing at the top of the first set of shelves was cake mix. I guess if my daughter were still living with me I’d feel motivated to bake a cake but I certainly wouldn’t do it for myself anymore.

Below that were some packages of gourmet biscuits and some boxes of Goldfish crackers, but then someone from behind tossed in several bags of gourmet potato chips cut in the shape of French fries. I took a bag but then heard a conversation between volunteers, as one guy asked what they were and the reception guy answered that they were just stale potato chips. Well wouldn’t that make you feel just dandy about picking them?

From the bottom he gave me four Fibre-1 oats and chocolate bars.

I skipped the rice, pasta and sauce shelves and the canned beans and vegetables shelves.

I took a carton of organic creamy broccoli soup and then he asked me if I wanted some taco bowls. There were packages of five. I suddenly thought of that pre-election photo op on cinco de mayo of Donald Trump trying to placate all the Mexicans he’d insulted by eating a meal in a taco bowl, but I was intrigued anyway and took one package. He gave me another because I hadn’t taken much from the other shelves.

There was still conditioner left at the bottom of the second to last shelf, but all of the Aveeno was for colour treated hair. He gave me a bottle of Live Clean clear water hydrating conditioner. I think I’ve got enough hair stuff now to last me through the sticky summer.

From the cereal section I was glad to see that Shreddies were back. They were sans cartons but just as welcome or more so.

Across the aisle in Angie’s section there was a half-liter of 2% milk as usual. She also gave me eight cheese sticks and a choice between a pack frozen hot dogs and a bag of frozen breakfast sausages. I picked the sausages; she hesitated, and then gave me two bags, explaining that they had lots.

I feel almost guilty every time I pass by the bread section. I hope the bread lady doesn’t take it personally.

The vegetable lady gave me some potatoes, a few carrots, an onion or two and half of a rubbery bunch of broccoli.

As I was leaving, the guy who’d been two places ahead of me in line was on his way back in, but he stopped to ask me if I had two loonies for a toonie because he needed the change for the streetcar. I checked but didn’t have it so he went back into the food bank to see if anyone else could split two dollars for him. I was still unlocking my bike when he came back out and suggested to him that he could save a lot of money by getting a bicycle. He clarified that he was not allowed to ride a bike and many other types of exercise because he has a spinal chord injury.

I headed straight to the supermarket because a person needs to have fruit. I got strawberries and grapes, though quite a few of the grapes were too soft. I bought raisin bread, canned peaches and yogourt. On the way home I picked up two cans of beer.

That night I grilled the Italian sausages that I’d gotten a couple of days before, and had them with eggs and toasted bagels.

I watched a couple of episodes of Leave It To Beaver. In one, the perfect mother, June Cleaver showed some mean spiritedness towards Eddie Haskell. The boys were playing basketball with the hoop that Ward had put up above the garage door, so she was making them sandwiches for them, keeping in mind that Eddie had told her that he was allergic to mayonnaise. When Eddie measured the hoop and found that it was shorter than regulation, she decided to put mayonnaise on his sandwich anyway.

There was a white stretch SUV the length of a city bus parked across the street for several minutes. Music was blasting from inside but I don’t know why it was sitting there unless the kids inside had decided to go into the Coffee Time. 

Best Before

            Friday was my second day in a row of having to work early at OCADU. The instructor, Nick Aoki usually engages with the students a bit at the beginning but he didn’t even say hello to anyone. His class also seemed a bit somber.

            I had my laptop with me and during short breaks I worked on my journal. At the halfway mark he gave a lecture while showing some slides and then let them take a 20-minute break, so I ended up with 40 minutes, during half an hour of which I took a nap. Later I commented, “Everybody’s so quiet!” He said he didn’t know what everyone else’s excuse was but he was tired as usual. At the end I heard him tell someone that he was going to go home and sleep for two days.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco to pick up some of the items that hadn’t gotten on Thursday because I knew I’d be passing by again. I bought grapes, a mango, Italian sausages, bacon and yogourt.

            That night I made two patties from the ground chicken I’d bought a few days before and started grilling them. But the meat was one day past its best before date and it smelled off while cooking, so I took it out and threw it away. As an alternative I thought I might heat up some egg patties that I’d cooked from frozen a few days before, but they smelled a little sour, so I threw those away too. By this time I needed something quick so I put some frozen chicken wieners in the oven and had some of those with a couple of potatoes.

            There was a little snowstorm that started in the evening. The snowplows sounded like a giant iron barrel rolling quickly down the street.

            As usual, at about a half an hour before midnight, the young man with the beautiful singing voice walked west on the south side of Queen. I’ve never heard him singing the same song twice and this time it was a lovely, loud and clear rendering of Paul Simon’s “Sounds of Silence”.

Flattery Strategy

            I had to work early on Thursday morning. Everyone passes me when I’m riding the mountain bike, though with the Phoenix only the spandex freaks tended to get the better of me. I guess one of the benefits I’m getting from pushing that heavy machine around is that it’s giving my legs a lot of strength so that if I start riding a lighter bike again I’ll be able to whiz past everybody.

            I worked for Terry Shoffner, who informed me that Bob Berger, my favourite teacher to work for at OCADU, would be retiring after this year. Apparently he and his wife have a house in Port Hope but pay $3000.00 a month for their apartment in Toronto so he can teach.

            I commented that all of the good ones are leaving, then asked Terry if he was sticking around. He declared that they were gonna have to drag him out, but later he admitted that he’d probably pack up in another five years. He informed me that he was seventy years old and I was surprised. I told him he didn’t look seventy and he thanked me but I offered that he looked about sixty-five. Afterwards though I thought that saying that someone looks only five years younger than their actual age isn’t much of a compliment. This kind of flattery must be done in ten year increments or else it’s useless. Giving someone five less years of visible aging is just small change. It’s like when things are only fifty cents off at the supermarket. What kind of piddly sale is that? Even if I wanted the product I’d walk away from it after such an insult. I should have told him that he looked sixty. I think that when I told him he looked sixty-five I was comparing him to me and assuming that I look my age of sixty-one, which may not be true.

            He said that after a faculty member at OCADU turns seventy their health benefits go down. That seemed like the opposite of the way it should be to me.

            Terry and I talked about all the instructors that have retired. There are only two teachers left that I worked for in the 80s. He named some teachers that used to be there and I named a few. I didn't recognize all of the ones he named and he didn't recognize all of mine, but there were many that we both knew. Three of the old instructors had a jazz band and quite a few other OCA teachers past and present were or are musicians. From a model's point of view there is so much less work at the college than there used to be that we don't tend to see instructors enough anymore to get to know them.

            I rode home and had time to lie down for an hour and a half though I don't think I got any sleep. This was surprising considering that I didn't sleep the night before either. When I got up I had about half an hour to eat some yogourt with peaches and then I headed back to OCADU to work for Bob Berger.

            When Bob shook hands with me in the classroom he asked how I was. I told him I’d received some sad news that day. “What happened?” he inquired with concern. “I heard you’re retiring.” He told me that it’s time for him to retire now because there is so much that he wants to do and teaching takes up too much time and energy. He wants to paint a lot and he wants to find one good gallery where he can always show his paintings. He mentioned also that he’d like to get back into music. I remember him telling me that he used to play guitar with a band. I admitted that it was happy news for him to be retiring and that I was happy for him but that I would miss him. He assured me that he would miss his family at OCADU as well. I imparted that Aretha Franklin had announced her retirement as well and asked him if that was a coincidence. He laughed and insisted that she is way above him. I pointed out that they are both about the same age.

            I worked for Bob’s class the first session of a pose that would finish next Thursday. As usual, he had me pose with my clothes on and since he likes to have me sitting with a book, I made notes for my upcoming English essay.

            In the room where I was working the stage is particularly high and I wrenched my bad knee while stepping down from it too suddenly.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought milk, orange, canned peaches, toilet paper and toothpaste. The guy behind me at the checkout revealed to me that he’d been in Aesthetics class with me last fall. I didn’t recognize him but then again I sat in the front and hardly saw anyone that didn’t speak up in class to make me turn around. He confessed that he hadn’t done very well on the course so I didn’t rub it in that I’d gotten an A. He left while I was still bagging my groceries but I saw him again unlocking his bike and asked him if he was a philosophy student. He disclosed that he was a music major. I hadn’t known that Music was a possible major at U of T. I asked why he hadn’t gone to the Conservatory but he surprised me with the information that they don’t teach jazz there. It looks like he’s right that there is no course there that focuses entirely on jazz. I offered that I’d heard that they had a pretty good jazz program at Humber College. He admitted that was true but insisted that it’s not as good as U of T. I guess that the University of Toronto’s Jazz curriculum is probably more selective than Humber in that the auditioning process is stricter and I’ll bet they take in fewer students. This guy is probably pretty impressive if he got in. He was interested to hear about the Canadian Poetry course that I’m taking and said that’s the kind of course he’d like to take but was disappointed to find out that it’s a third year course so he can’t take it as an elective. He told me he lives in the neighbourhood and shops at Freshco all the time so we’ll likely see each other again. 

Voodoo Curse

            On Wednesday I spent a lot of the day getting caught up on my journal entry for Tuesday, about my class at U of T. Since the poet we covered was El Jones, who in her book “Live From The Afrikan Resistance” is extremely political and about her Black heroes and hard core Black issues, I found it interesting when I looked up the many images of her that are available online, that if I already hadn't read her book I would have thought she was Native. I don't see any African features in her visage at all. George had mentioned that she is Afro-Metis but I wonder if she writes about her Metis or Native side. It seems to me that there's even more to be political about over there.

            In the evening I stepped out to buy a can of beer to have with dinner, and noticed that the sidewalk in front of the liquor store was empty. There was no one panhandling. That's the first time that I haven't seen a beggar or a busker there when I've passed or gone in since that store opened up on Queen several months ago. Not that I care either way. It's just interesting like suddenly the CN Tower has temporarily disappeared.

            I watched a couple of interesting episodes of “Leave It To Beaver”. In the first one, Wally, the Beaver and Eddie Haskell were going to the movies, but when June found out they were going to see a film called “Voodoo Curse” she forbade Wally to take the Beaver because she felt he was too young. Wally promised that he wouldn’t take him, but the devil in his ear, Eddie Haskell argued in front of the theatre that he technically wouldn’t be breaking his promise if the Beaver took him to the movie, so that’s what they did. Beaver though forgot his baseball cap in the theatre and when Eddie found that out he called up Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver to tell them at which theatre Beaver had left it. He seemed to do this out of deviousness because that revealed to Wally and Beaver’s parents that the kids had disobeyed them. While they were banished to their rooms Beaver took a doll, put Eddie Haskell’s name on it and stuck it with pins. The next day, Eddie was home sick from school. Beaver felt responsible, so he went to see Eddie to apologize. Eddie’s mother led Beaver to Eddie’s bedroom but as soon as his mother was gone, Eddie jumped out of bed and revealed that he was faking and that he does it all the time. Beaver confessed what he’d done with the doll and Eddie asked why he’d do a goofy thing like that. Beaver said matter of factly, “Because you got us in trouble, I don’t like you very much, even Wally doesn’t like you very much and he wouldn’t like you at all if you weren’t his best friend.” Upon hearing about the pins that Beaver had placed in the stomach of the doll, Eddie got psychosomatically sick in those areas.

            The other episode involved a general intelligence test for the whole school of which Beaver got the highest mark. It was determined that Beaver was a genius and so he’d have to go to a special school. It turned out that a new kid had switched his test with Beaver’s because he noticed that everybody liked Beaver but nobody liked him because he was a genius. He thought people would like him more if nobody thought he was smart.

            I remember we had one of those tests in Grade Six and afterward they moved me to a smarter class, even though my grades for most things besides English were still below average.

Eluned Jones

            On Tuesday throughout the morning I kept on checking the tracking number of the package that I’d mailed to my daughter on Monday evening. I saw that it had arrived at the post office in Montreal at 8:30 but it wasn’t until the early afternoon that I finally saw the “delivered” box lit up in green on Canada Post’s tracking website. Astrid messaged me about an hour later to let me know that she received it. I had packed the cooked food directly from the freezer to a thermal bag with a gel pack and then the shipping box, so I was curious how cold it had stayed during its journey. I was relieved and gratified when she confirmed that there were parts of the roti that were still frozen when she opened the parcel.

            Every Tuesday except for one since school resumed in January the streets have been wet for riding either because of rain or snow. This time it had been raining all afternoon and it had started to turn the freezing rain just as I was heading for class. On Maple Grove the rain was freezing in the treetops but then knocking its own little flowers of ice down around me. As I made my way down College, the road was not slippery, when I stopped at a light and tried to rest my foot on the edges of the sidewalks, it slid a bit each time.

            When I was locking my bike to the wrought iron railing in front of University College, I dug the rubber cover for my lock out of my backpack to prevent the keyhole from getting plugged by ice over the next few hours.

            It was a precarious walk to the side entrance because the sidewalk didn’t seem to have been salted. The handrail for the steps was coated in ice.

            I had brought my laptop to work on my essay but I just decided to make notes as I compared a poem about Paul Robeson by El Jones to one about Sidney Poitier by Wayde Compton.

            George arrived a little over five minutes late all wintered up in a long, light brown, woolen winter coat, a long scarf and a little darker brown woolen skullcap that looked like a shrunken toque. He came in to drop off his bag and then he left again, coming back with two boxes of the latest issue of Geist Magazine. George gave up the Geist but there was a whole box and then some left over.

            He announced that later on we would have a guest reading by Adebe DeRango-Adem.

            He said we would be talking about the expressivity of El Jones and he was going to do something that he rarely did: He would start with a lecture on the speaking voice. El Jones’s first promulgation as a poet was dropping and reciting in performance mode. She doesn’t care about getting published in journals that are written by boring people. She doesn’t want an echo chamber of elites cartooning her position. There is a quiet cold war going on between print and performance. Dramatic art is for recitation and not for a private reader’s wasteland. T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland should be read with crack. We can talk about how good Jones’s poetry is but without a doubt she engages social issues. Her readings are emancipatory and help the audience to come to terms with her issues. She wants to be memorable, therapeutic and transformative.

            El Jones is Afro-Metis and though she is based in Nova Scotia right now she is from Winnipeg where she received the highest average ever in the history of the University of Manitoba. The simplicity of her writing is deliberate so she can reach out to audiences that are marginalized, that do not read, that are in prison. She performs for people in prison who have offended the queen. As Canadians we often forget that we are living in a monarchy but when you are charged it is the crown that argues against you. It’s the queen who wants you to go to prison.

            George’s lecture on voice was divided into five parts: V for vernacular; O for orature; I for imagery; C for cadence and E for Emphasis.

            On Vernacular: Whatever spoken word may be it is violence; vox populi – the voice of the nation. Jean Chretien talks with the articulation of the people. In Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, the bad nigguh Caliban says, “Ya taught me language and my profit is how to curse!” He was only taught the rudiments. Language is always violent when the oppressor imposes an oppressive tongue because the violence of that language becomes the opposition to the oppressor.

            In Soweto in 1976 the South African government tried to impose the Afrikaans language on the Black population, but they chose English and that was one of the hallmarks for the end of Apartheid.

            There is always an oral accent in literature. Jeffery Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was meant to be read aloud. It was written in English at a time when the official language of the realm was Latin.

            Dante used folk lingo for his satirical theology of the Inferno.

            Bobby Burns wrote canonical poems in every day language. His Romanticism was nationalistic, close to the people and down to earth.

            Yeats gave his English an Irish cast.

            The Finnish Kalevala, a late 19^th Century poetic collection of Finnish folk tales of was meant to be read aloud.

            The five hundred page Dictionary of Newfoundland English displays the rich vocabulary of a spoken language. Newfoundland’s school system was run by four churches, including the Salvation Army until 1995. Imagine the Salvation Army controlling your learning. Education has actually deteriorated in Newfoundland since the system changed.

            Linguist, Ian Pringle says that the Ottawa Valley alone has many dialects.

            George mentioned “Black Skin, White Masks” by Frantz Fanon, about the Negro and language.

            Vernacular is the key to authenticity.

            On Orature: It is separate from print because there is a split. Dub poets like Lillian Allen and Clifton Joseph struggled for years to have their oral work considered legitimate enough for them to be admitted into the League of Canadian Poets.

            George took a moment to announce that on February 9^th he would be one of the speakers at an event called “Leonard Cohen: Ethics and the Artist” with a choir singing some of Cohen’s songs at University College at noon and then later on that night at “Jazz Valentines for Austin Clarke with jazz accompaniment at the Central Reference Library.

            The rise of the modernist movement, under the influence of fascists like Ezra Pound pushed poetry away from the oral tradition and back to print and threw out the baby with the bathwater.

            Canada had hero writing in the voice of the people like Walt Whitman, so it leaned towards a more academic literature. Robert Service with poems like “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and William Henry Drummond’s Habitant poems were not accepted in Canada as legitimate literature.

            George told us that it was hard to believe that he had been in the Yukon two weeks ago and in Barbados last week.

            The best poetry has an oral dimension, such as that of Alan Ginsberg, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Lawrence Ferlingheti and the Black Power Poets.

            Canada is elitist.

            On Imagery: Imagery is about repetition, sound effects and alliteration.

            Derek Walcott writes in the canonical tradition but in the demotic Caribbean patois.

            Ezra Pound, despite putting an emphasis on print, was influenced by Robert Browning and read his own poems in the voice of a carnie barker. He grew up listening to tent show recitations and minstrel shows. Toronto and other towns in southern Ontario were some of the main stops in the blackface minstrel show circuit.

            There was the free speech movement of the 60s; George Bowering and the TISH movement. Milton Acorn got fined in 1962 for reading a poem at Allan Gardens.

            There was Confessionalism; the sound poets such as the Four Horsemen and Bill Bissett. Dionne Brand used to perform with the Gayap Drummer.

            On Cadence: Cadence is a reaction to insular imagery; professorial schools; the applauding of naturisms and scientific vocabulary. There is an ethnocentric taint to the reaction. Poets of colour and of other struggling communities are relegated to expressing themselves in the spoken word. Cadence is about musicality and flow and pulls notions from the popular song.

                On Emphasis: Emphasis shows a willingness to break up words like in songs. There is a willingness to read a poem as if singing a song, thereby busting it open. There is flow, patter and rhyme to enrapture the audience.

                James Brown was a primary example of emphasis. He sang like he just didn’t care about language. He would scream non-verbally to emphasize emotion. He mentioned again the duet between Luciano Pavaroti and James Brown. He said that Pavaroti wrote the lyrics to the part that he sang: “I'uomo rincorre il potere ma lui non sa che il grande limiti ad essere come si parrá nel palmo stringe un ‘idea che non vive che nella sua fantasia… volle se non si accorde che poi nulla ha piú senso te si vive solo per sé … Nulla ha piú senso te … Si vive solo per sé … se non si accorde che poi … Si vive solo per sé, solo per sé Solo per sé”. It seems to refer mostly to man pursuing power that is only imaginary and limiting.

            I asked George how he found out that Pavarotti had written his own lyrics for that performance. He answered, “Because I read ‘The One’ by R. I. Smith.” I couldn’t find any reference to it anywhere.            El Jones begins her book with a quote from Obama’s controversial preacher, Jeremiah Wright.             The anti slavery activists were spoken word performers.             Jones thinks it doesn’t matter if poems are perfectly crafted. Her book was constructed on the fly between spoken word engagements.

            At this point George introduced our guest poet, Adebe DeRango-Adem. He said that she writes poetry of the people from the roots. She said that she lives back and forth between Canada and the United States. She read from her book, “Terra Incognita”.

            She began with, “In the world through which we travel, we are endlessly creating ourselves.”

            From her second poem – “ … I needed to redeem myself from the future … I will teach you how to dance … Let’s dance together by the sea and underneath the dirty fingernail moon …”

            From “My Past Lives” – “I was a rich sailor in my first life … Cigar smoke through bullet holes … Maybe the gods laughing at the veneer of my face … Me, I’ve already died … Popping my fingers to silence …”

            She told us that George Elliot Clarke is one of her mentors and dedicated the poem “Blood Root” to him – “I too am America, have always been … For the first time in the history of these skins, some mulatto brother wins …”

            She said she also mentored with Baraka. The next poem was for him – “No spontaneous ignorance … Who will speak now of a beatific song … Your conjunction a little more blues than jazz … Now you join the rest without protest … The last quatrain on the last train out …”

            From “Maron Inconnu” – “Being broken down into a moment I become me … This is how the sea compensates for our chaos of forms … The history books escaped … Songs of Calypso … The romance of origins … The news of the end … The ancestors will be exiles on their own soil …”

            From Adebe’s last poem – “Every cry in the vortex, every repetition a firmer future … Sand castles that please … Understand freedom to reel back like a fish … Go forth dear traveler. If what fills you kills you then pray for gills. Improvise this thing called alive. The strange hallelujah of an imperfect self.”

            George invited questions for Adebe, so Zack asked her if she was studying. She answered that she’s doing graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, despite the fact that it’s Donald Trump’s alma mater. She said she’s working on a doctorate on how the phantom presence of mixed race figures in literature.

            George asked her how she balances poetry and criticism. She responded that they are parallel universes and a range of set knowledges. She said she writes reviews for Quill and Quire and finds it difficult to criticize other poets.

            I thought that Adebe Adem had some good moments in her reading. Her work is thoughtful with sometimes good imagery and some nice turns of phrase.

            George called a break. I asked him if I could write my essay on a comparison of how El Jones and Wayde Compton engage with their subject matter. He told me to email the thesis to him but he said it sounds like it would be all right.

            After the break, Adebe sat in on the class. Zack moved to sit beside her, perhaps so she could share his copy of the El Jones book.

            George said that Canadian poets up until the turn of the century rejected the Walt Whitman model because they felt compelled to follow the British models, except for Bliss Carmen. It’s only recently that the League of Canadian Poets has offered a spoken word prize.

            We returned to “Live From The Afrikan Resistance”. El Jones’s full name is Eluned Jones. Her introduction for the book is defensive.

            We looked at the very first poem, about Thomas Peters. When George asked for feedback I said it “sucks” then tried to explain why. I said the writing is adolescent, the rhymes are awkward and it looks like she just took the information about the man from Wikipedia and put it in verse. Obviously George disagreed with me because he thinks Jones is amazing.

            The next poem was “Choose Your Own Adventure”. I commented that it has no rhythm or musicality and that it just sounds like she is saying stuff. George argued that the rhythm would be revealed in her performance but I think that a good performer can add rhythms where there aren’t any that have been deliberately composed. That’s why it sounds like a poem when George reads roll call. He gives it a rhythm instinctively.

            The next poem was “Shakespeare” which caused a bit of a stir when he recently placed it on the Parliamentary website as a poem of the month. A journalist contacted George to question the appropriateness of a poem that refers to Shakespeare as a “nigga” on the parliamentary website. I asked if she was really implying that Shakespeare was Black. George said with a smile, “C’mon Christian! It’s Black history month! Of course he was a brother!” I said there’s a YouTube video that claims that Beethoven and Mozart were Black. George said, “Well, Beethoven anyway!” Then he told the story of Beethoven’s relationship with George Bridgetower, their collaboration and their rivalry over a woman. Bridgetower helped Beethoven with the Kreutzer Sonata. They had a public fistfight because of their romantic rivalry and when an illustration of the battle was published, Beethoven was shown to be swarthy. I can’t find the image online.

            George mentioned that the queen is also part Black because her fifth grandmother, Charlotte Sophia was the wife of King George III and probably descended from the Black side of a Portuguese royal family. Her coronation portrait does suggest that she’s of mixed race.

            It was suggested that Shakespeare might have had a distinctly different accent than his colleagues in London. Perhaps he was seen as the hick from Avon.

            We looked at the poem “Mandela”, for which any line that does not end in the name “Mandela” ends in something that rhymes with it. This is called epistrophe. George said it’s a textbook example of how this kind of repetition can work.

            The poem talks about the re-imaging of Mandela after he was released from his 27 years in prison. The first speech he gave though after getting out was with a red flag with the hammer and sickle on it prominently displayed.

            I informed George that the ANC’s theme song is still “Bring me my machine gun”.

            The last verse of the poem “Prisons” has an ominous reference to Donald Trump – “It’s sickening how The Apprentice glorifies a corporate villain who made his shady billions off pyramid scams and swindles and building luxury hotels for other reptilians who suck the blood and dignity from working civilians. And when he fires his workers his ratings go into the millions and we reward the master and humiliate his victims …”

            Her poem, “Brands” uses the names of corporate brands as words in the poem.

            I read her poem “The Letter B”, which uses a lot of alliteration of words that start with “B”. George pointed out that Jones used “bear” to mean “bare”. He also critiqued her line, “Black babies should shine like the light of a billion bonfires” as being a tricky image.

            From her poem, “War On Black Women”, George thought her line “Femicide is the global warming of women” does not work smoothly.

            In “Kings and Queens” she says “We could do like Haiti and free each other” but George argued that freedom was not really the result of that rebellion.

            In another line she uses what George called a rhetorical overreach when she spoke of “dead presidents” and included Obama. It was a deliberate embrace of imprecision.

            In the poem “Be Loyal, Be Strong, Be Free” she has the line “Pound for pound some of the best Black people in existence”. George opined that it’s too close to Black slaves being weighed on the auction block.

            George concluded by declaring that a book is still the best form of non-electronic technology.

            As we were packing up, someone came up to ask George a question and the three of us ended up continuing the conversation about El Jones. I argued that Wayde Compton speaks on the same issues as Jones does but much more eloquently. George said that Compton has a different and more academic audience.
            It was raining harder when I walked to my bike. I didn’t slip much on the sidewalk and the roads weren’t slippery on the way home. The rain even stopped as I was riding.

Roti

            I really hate working as early as 8:30 because it interrupts the things I like to do at home at that hour, but I had to work on Monday morning and would have to work the same shift on Thursday and Friday as well. I posed for David Scopick’s photography class, which is not hard work other than the struggle to stay awake with the bright, hot lights in my eyes while he lectures about and demonstrates how to light a model for portraiture.

            He told them that the main light should always light the far side of the face and that the fill light, if used, should always be shining from near the position of the camera.

            At one point he told me to get up and have a stretch while he prepared another light. I grabbed a chocolate pretzel bar from my bag to wake me up. I shoved the last of it in my mouth as he asked me to sit down again and he asked, “Finished your treat?” He seems to be a nice guy with a slightly gruff manner, so it was hard to tell if he was trying to be engaging or if he was expressing disapproval about me having a quick snack. Maybe I just think too much about people’s reactions to me. 

            We didn’t take a coffee break and as usual David was finished with me about 45 minutes before the end of the class. He shook my hand and told me not to tell anyone that he’d let me go early.

            On the way home I stopped at the bank to take out sixty dollars because I had to mail a fairly large package to my daughter later on and I wasn’t sure how much the post office was going to charge me.

            A few months before that, Astrid had commented to me in a Facebook message that she missed roti while living in Montreal. Early in the New Year I got the crazy idea that maybe I could send her some of the West Indian wrap by mail. At first I thought I could just buy some from Ali’s, pack it in a box and mail it, in which case I figured that I probably shouldn’t send any meat. A potato roti though is something that I’d probably eat if I’d bought it and forgot to refrigerate for 24 hours, so I thought that I might send a few of those.

            So on Wednesday, February 1^st I went to Ali’s Roti shop to ask if they thought I could send some roti to Montreal. I first talked to the guy at the counter and explained that my daughter lives in Montreal but she misses roti. He nodded knowingly and informed me that everybody from Toronto who moves to Montreal misses roti. I asked if he thought it was crazy to send roti by mail. He informed me that they send roti all across the country and gave me the example that they’ve just sent a hundred roti out to Vancouver. I said that I wanted to use Canada Post Express mail. He went and got the owner to talk to me about it. The owner of Ali’s seems like a very kind man and he will often touch your hand or shoulder gently when he’s trying to make a point. He explained to me that in order to successfully send roti to Montreal I would have to first freeze the food, then pack it up and send it so it will still be cold when it arrives. For that reason he recommended to buy everything cold. All the items that one would buy hot from a roti shop are already cooked and then reheated before they are served, so if I buy it cold and freeze it should be just as good when thawed. So I bought one dhal puree roti, one potato and spinach roti and one boneless chicken roti, plus three doubles with chutney.  As I was waiting, the guy behind the counter mused that it might be a good idea for him to open up a roti shop in Montreal. I asked for some small containers of hot sauce and he threw them in for free. I put all of the food from Ali’s into the freezer.

            On Thursday February 2^nd I had planned on sending the package of frozen Rotis to Astrid, but I was distracted by my trip to the dentist, then when I got home I forgot, then I went to sleep and when I woke up it was past the 17:00 o’clock shipping deadline. I went to the post office anyway to double check but it turned out that I was screwed for sending the food until Monday. I went to the Dollarama to buy foil and freezer bags in hopes that they would keep the roti cold longer when I did send them. I realized though, after all the wrapping, the three roti and the three doubles were too big for the box, so I went to buy a bigger one from the post office when I got back to Parkdale after my dental appointment on Saturday.

            On Monday afternoon I rushed to get everything packed. I put all the frozen rotis and doubles inside of a thermal bag that I had found while riding north of the Danforth last summer. I placed a frozen gel pack inside the bag, closed the box and taped it up, then I addressed it and rushed over to the post office with fifteen minutes to spare before shipping time, though I had to wait at least five minutes behind a woman who was sending about twenty small parcels that each had to be weighed.

            I managed to get it sent out with the evening shipment and I really hoped everything would stay cold by the time Astrid got it. 

Spitting Off of Bridges

            I first found out about my English essay assignment five weeks before the deadline of February 28. I thought I would have plenty of time to dedicate to writing a great paper, but what with bike repairs, work and other things that came up, after almost two weeks I haven’t got much more than a seventh of the thing thrown together. On Sunday I needed to do laundry and since it’s winter and I’ve been wearing a lot of layers, the garbage bag full of clothing that I had to carry while riding my bike was bigger than usual. With the Phoenix when I carted laundry there was sometimes the problem of the bottom of the bag getting whipped by the spokes and a small hole getting ripped in the corner. But this was my first time carting laundry with the mountain bike, which has a much wider space between the forks and the spokes and on the way back with my clean clothes the corner of the bag got pulled right into the wheel, pulling some of my clothes right out to wind around the front wheel. I had to get off and carry my bike over to the bike stands in front of the liquor store. I tried to pull the back out but I couldn’t until I started turning it to unwind the clothing, some of which ended up touching the wet ground after having just been washed and dried. The bag now had two holes at opposite ends. I managed to stuff the clothing back inside and to tie the bag with the slack around each ragged opening.

            I put the torrent file that I’d downloaded of Microsoft Office onto a flashdrive and tried to install it on my laptop but the program copied as an image file and so it was useless. The next thing I did was to go online with my laptop but it seems that I get a better signal when I’m sitting with it on the floor. I downloaded Bit Torrent but when I tried to access Pirate Bay the site was down. Since I had to work early the next morning, since I had no idea how long Pirate Bay would be down and because I definitely needed to be able edit Word documents with my laptop during breaks at work, I had no choice but to join the cult of Open Office like Nick Cushing and Neil Rich have been bugging me about. I downloaded Open Office and had it working in half an hour. Since I tend to create the files on my main computer in Microsoft Word, I would only be using Open Office for minor edits anyway.

            I roasted four chicken legs and marinated them with Chardonnay Citrus gourmet sauce. It isn’t bad but it tastes more like onion than either chardonnay or citrus. I guess it’s not as sexy to call it “Onion Gourmet Sauce” though.

            I watched two episodes of “Leave It To Beaver”. The second one had some interesting parts. Beaver was trying to make some money because Wally, Tooey and Eddy Haskell had decided to build a clubhouse but Eddy said Beaver couldn’t join unless he paid them three dollars. Beaver set about to try to make the money. He asked his mother who the richest person in town was and found out that he’d made his money through advertising. While sitting in the park he met a guy who makes a living wearing a sandwich board, so Beaver made his own sandwich board. While walking across his favourite spitting bridge he talked to a worker that was painting it and asked him who owned the bridge. The painter said, “Well, everybody, including you”. Beaver wrote a sign that read: “Ten Cents To Spit Off My Bridge” and he ended up making about six dollars. But later in the park the same bum came to sit down and upon hearing that Beaver had made some money he gave him a sob story about how his daughter had nothing to eat. He said that he’d stolen her mother out from under the nose of a sultan and that she had danced with bells on her ankles. But after they’d had a daughter together the mother died and so he was left to fend for both himself and his little girl who had blue eyes during the day and brown eyes at night. Beaver gave him all his money. When Beaver told the story to his brother, Wally told him that he’d gotten duped because everybody knows that guy was a con man. Beaver informed Wally that he’d known that the story wasn’t true all along. Wally asked, “Well, why did you give him your money then?” Beaver answered, “Cause nobody ever told me a story like that before.”