I spent most of Sunday reading the e-book I downloaded of Louise
Fitzhugh’s “Harriet the Spy”, and finished it a little after 16:00. It was hard
for me not to identify somewhat with Harriet, given that she keeps a journal of
everything that happens to her. We’re different though in that she writes
things in her notebook about people that she wouldn’t say to someone’s face.
For me, anything worth writing is worth saying. Harriet is eleven in this story
and that’s close to the age that I was when I started writing. I think though
that everything I wrote back then came out as poetry. Only certain cultural
references indicate the era in which the book is set. Ben Casey and Dr Kildare
are mentioned as television shows, so it had to take place in the mid-sixties,
plus one of the other eleven year olds said, “That’s not a scene I can make!”
It turns out that the book was published in 1964, so if Harriet had been a real
person she’d be two years older than me now.
The story involves
her writing down in her notebook everything she thinks about anything and
everybody, some of which things are negative, because, of course, that’s how
the mind works. We think negatively and positively about the same thing and
then when we act, we tend to pick the positive unless the situation demands
something darker. She marked her journal “Private”, but some schoolmates found
it and there was something negative about every one of them, so they were all
pissed off. In my view it was none of their business unless she’d decided to
publish what she’d written about them with their real names intact, which
wasn’t her intention. The moral of the story is, yes, if you’re a writer you
have to write about everything and everybody, but you have to make sure no one
reads it. If they do read it, you have to do two things: apologize and lie.
I took a short bike
ride in the evening. As I rode east on Bloor, the smiling moon looked like it
had cut off its right ear and mailed it to a prostitute.
I had planned on
riding to Yonge and then down to Queen, but I thought I’d take St George
instead, because I wanted to see if Robarts was open. It turns out it’s open
till 20:30 on Sundays, so I checked to see if I could find two of the books
that are on my course reading list: “Frog and Toad are Friends” and “George and
Martha”. They were both available at the Faculty of Information, but that was
closed. As I rode south toward College, I passed a couple of young women. One
of them was saying, “It’s not like a spinning class at a regular gym. The place
is packed with people and they are all so focused!” As I rode west on College,
what was left of the sunset looked like an Orangina stain on pale blue
linoleum.
I watched Buster
Keaton’s 1923 silent film, “Three Ages”, which is basically three intertwined
short comedy films on competition between men for the love of a woman, each set
in a different age. In the prehistoric age, Buster is riding a dinosaur. Two
cavemen are competing for a woman and the father determines which one is a
proper husband by clubbing them both over the head and picking the one that’s
still standing. In the Roman era Buster and another guy compete in a chariot
race. For some reason though, it’s a very snowy winter in Rome, so Buster
equips his chariot with skis and has huskies pulling it. Since he’s winning,
the other guy’s accomplice has a cat run in front of the dogs and out of the
coliseum, so the dogs chase it. Buster’s solution is to tie the cat to the end
of a long pole and dangle it in front of the dogs. I think the animal cruelty
rules were much laxer in those days because I’m pretty certain it was a real
cat tied and squirming at the end of the pole. Buster wins the race, but the
loser has him tossed into a pit where there is a lion. The lion wasn’t real,
but looked about twice as much like a lion as the lion in the Wizard of Oz.
Buster gives the lion a manicure and they part, the best of friends. In the
modern era story, the comedy was more centred on Buster being chased by the
cops. At the end of all three stories, Buster won the girl, as usual.
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