We Don't Work or Live Here, We're a Film Crew

           

            There was a large film crew set up on Dunn Ave and also in the Capital Espresso on the Tuesday morning of August 2nd. I overheard one passerby say to another, “Oh, it’s a film crew! I thought all those people were working!”

On Tuesday my top priority was to prepare my grant application for my courses in September and to hopefully be able to hand it in before the Admissions and Awards office closed at 16:30.

            Nick Cushing was in town for an unplugged Frequency Zed show, but he came early to shoot some video around Toronto. He called me but I told him that I could only get together in the evening because of all the financial paperwork I had to prepare for my grant.

            I had to go online to the OCADU website so I could access and print up my payroll receipts from August 2015 to the present. Then I had to dig through my business drawer to gather up all of my social assistance cheque stubs for the same period. The main problem was that my internet connection was horrible from both my sources and I often had to switch to one when the other failed, which was often. Once that was done I photographed all my social assistance stubs in groups of three. By the time I had my Noah Meltz grant application filled out and had attached to it all of my financial information, it was too late to go downtown to hand it in.

            I went to pay for my August phone service, and then I called Nick to let him know I wasn’t going anywhere.

            I took a siesta for about an hour and fifteen minutes and then after I got up, Nick came by with two cans of Lowenbrau. We chatted for a while, and then Nick showed me how to bypass Windows 10’s annoying import application in order to get files from the bike cam to my computer. My video of the food bank line-up that had been seemingly trapped in the camera came through fine the way Nick showed me how to do it.

            Nick also had three videos that he’d shot last month of me singing and playing my song “Love In Remission”. I had not heard a new recording of myself playing one of my songs for almost fifteen years and so I never knew what that particular song sounded like. I was pleasantly surprised. I made a mistake in each video but we just have to mesh the best parts together to make one good video.

            I stood at my window as a young woman walking along the other side of Queen Street noticed me looking at her and began to play with her hair.

            That night I watched a couple of second season episodes of “I Love Lucy”. Every show since the announcement of her pregnancy found comedy in the situations that stem from a couple that are expecting a child. Both of the episodes I watched that night made fun of Lucy’s food cravings. The first began with Ricky arriving home after having looked all over town for a papaya milkshake. He found one and also brought Lucy the large dill pickle that she’d asked for and which she proceeds to dip into the milkshake and eat in a state of ecstasy. At the end of the other show, Ricky brought her a hot fudge sundae and a package of sardines, which she mixed together and ate with great pleasure.

On Camera in and Around the Tranzac

           

            On the Monday morning of August 1^st, the ice in my freezer had melted enough so I could remove it by hand. It was nice to have room in there again.

I watched an episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and Ricky are trying to decide on a name for the coming baby. Ricky is okay with anything but Lucy keeps changing her mind. She says that babies can’t just have any names. They have to be unique and euphonious. Ricky says, “Okay, “Unique” if it’s a boy and “Euphonious” if it’s a girl. Later she decides on John and Mary but then says, “Every Tom, Dick and Harry is named John!”

            I rode through another of the many soft and warm evenings we’ve had this summer to the Tranzac. I arrived half an hour earlier than usual because I’d arranged to meet Eugene Styles in front of the club. He’d called me up earlier that day, telling me that he wanted to shoot some video of me performing one of my songs about Parkdale. He said the ideal locations would be to shoot me under the railroad bridge at Dufferin and Queen and or in front of the globe sculpture in front of the Parkdale library. I was okay with the locations but he added that the ideal time would be between 3:00 and 5:00 and I told him that I wasn’t interested in leaving home at that hour of the morning to go out shoot some video. We were discussing when would be a good time to hook up when I mentioned that I would be going to the Tranzac that night. He got excited and said that it would be awesome if he could get some footage of me in a nearby alley that he knew of where there was some great graffiti.

            Eugene was sitting outside the Tranzac when I arrived. I went inside to sign in. The Southern Cross Bar was packed for Verry Terry Jones with Susan Cogan and Bob Cohen. Terry was singing some sentimental song about “daddy’s farm” or something like that. The bartender was just in the back numbering a sheet of paper for the open stage list when I came in, but had to try a couple of pens before he found one that worked. I put my name down beside the number 3 and went back outside to meet Eugene.

            We crossed Brunswick and went into the alley south of Bloor Street. He was disappointed that the graffiti had changed since he’d been there last and that the mural of the woman in front of which he’d wanted to film me had been replaced by a different mural. He had me climb to the top of the fire escape and play my song while he shot me from various positions on the ground and also while climbing the stairs towards me. I sang my song “The Next State of Grace”. When I was finished, he wanted me to do it again from the fire escape landing and this time he shot me from above and from ground level.

            We went back to the Tranzac, where Eugene bought me a beer. We had to sit at the back, by the bar and far from the stage because Terry Jones’s concert was still going on and there was no room at the front.

            A woman with white hair was playing guitar and singing a song, the chorus of which was praising the “goddess” and the “god”, while the verses sounded like they were in Yiddish.

            When Terry and Bob joined her for one last song, they did Richard Farina’s “Pack Up Your Sorrows”, and lots of people, including me, joined in on the chorus – “ …If somehow you could pack up your sorrows and give them all to me, you would lose them, I know how to use them, give them all to me …”

            Cad Gold Jr. came in and found a seat.

            I asked Eugene when I’d be able to see the footage he shot and he confessed that he didn’t have a computer with which to upload it yet and that he was working on getting one.

            Chris Banks got the sound set up for the open stage, but the people from the previous show kept hanging around and chatting like it was a cocktail party that was never going to end.

            Ben Bootsma arrived with his guitar and signed up at around start time, but we didn’t start on time. One guest musician from the Terry Jones show stayed behind and put his name down. It was Wayne Neon, who I’d heard perform with flute and guitar on a few occasions at Fat Albert’s.

            Isaac Bonk showed up just before the open stage got rolling, which was at about 22:30.

Eugene had told me that he was only going to shoot video of me and that he couldn’t stay till the end. He wound up recording everyone and was still there at the end after I left.

            Ben Bootsma was the first performer, with a cover of Mississippi John Hurt’s “Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me” – “ … When my earthly trials are over carry my body out in the sea, save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me … The only reason I work at all is to drive the world from my door …”

            Ben then did, “I’m Satisfied”, which is another Hurt cover – “ … Pull your dress to your knees, Give your total to who you please, I’m satisfied that it’s gonna bring you back …”

For his last song, Ben moved to the piano. Eugene asked him to wait while he reloaded a card on camera. It took a couple of minutes, and so Ben just played the piano softly while he was waiting. Then he did his own song, “On the Most Lonely Night”, as he’s been doing lately, each time he comes to the open stage, but this time he sang it in a much higher key. When He was done I told him that it worked better in the lower range. He sincerely appreciated the feedback.

Next, Wayne Neon performed what he said was a true, but sad original song – “I went to see my Bell today, I asked her for a phone … She said my stock is down on Bay Street … I’m not plugged into the system, my love life’s on the shelf …”

Then Wayne sang “Alcohol and Pills” by Fred Eaglesmith – “Hank Williams, he came up from Montgomery, with his heart full of broken country songs. Nashville, Tennessee didn’t really understand him … When he finally made it to the Grand Ole Opry, he made it stand still. He ended up on alcohol and pills … Fame doesn’t take away the pain, it just pays the bills …”

His third song was an original – “The lake may freeze and the dogs may howl … My pickup truck just won’t start at all and the snow plough is frozen to the ground … In the winter time I plan to devote some time to you …”

After Wayne, it was my turn. I started with my translation of Boris Vian’s “Le Déserteur”, explaining that the song was banned until the early 60s because it was considered unpatriotic. During the Folk revival though, which corresponded to the anti- Vietnam War era, it became popular for singers like Joan Baez to sing in French – “Dear Mr. President, I’ve put some thought in my note, so you will read it I hope when you’ve a spare moment. I have recently received my military papers to join in the invasion before next Wednesday eve. Dear Mr. President, I don’t want to fight in your war. I don’t think that I was born for the killing of other men …”

My second song was my own “Next State of Grace” – “ … And my mind hangs above this emotional wreck, like a scavenger looking for parts, and it lives in a mansion that’s built from the sweat of my tarpaper third world heart. Oh when, oh when will I ever learn, I’ll freeze here on Earth with a heart that won’t burn …” Ben told me it was really great.

Eugene had been filming everything, but the one piece he wanted to record was “Paranoiac Utopia”, which he’d heard me do at Shab-e She’r the week before, so that’s what I did – “A painful shedding of skin today as Parkdale’s paranoiac armour has been circumcised, only later to be reattached with the brain tissue solder of airplane glue. I tap politely on its barrier gate, but and riddled with accusations, as the writhing blinded beast defends itself from the mirror of my patience …”

Then came Isaac Bonk, with his response to the Orlando shooting – “Way down in Orlando town there’s fifty people gone … Who did condone the sale of arms to this man … Perhaps the manufacturers of war … the citizens who demand it as a right … and people getting scared of what they do not know … Pride in religion drove this man to kill …”

Isaac’s second song continued his parallel earth recreation of the career of Bob Dylan with his own very “The Times They Are A Changing”esque song which is probably called “The Ground Beneath Us Is Shifting” – “Oh come all my friends, my foes … The hopeless kings will die … leaving this darkened path … The hour now speaks, so peer through your drinks, your frightful eyes will know that the land beneath us is shifting … The burning flash will put to flames the sash …”
            His third song was his lament for a lost lover – “ … I sit here upon my broken seat dreaming of … she who I once held so dear … I see now the raven’s empty home … The compass has nothing left to show …”

            Since at the end of Isaac’s set we’d reached the end of the list, Chris called for a lightning round of one song each to finish up.

            Ben Bootsma once again sang “On The Most Lonely Night”, but in the lower key, as I’d suggested. It sounded much better. Wayne Neon played along from his table on the flute.

            I had planned on doing a quieter piece but there were a couple of non-participants that were also not interested in the open stage. They were sitting at the bar and having a loud conversation, so I had to sing something louder and more upbeat to counterbalance their lack of consideration, so I did my English adaptation of Serge Gainbourg’s “L’accordion” – “ … When sometimes he massacres her buttons of pearl, he’ll rip one of his own for his accordion. When her support is in danger he’ll lend his suspenders, so what holds his pants on is an accordion. In accord with chords, all tune in and turn on, then afford what you horde to the accordion …”

            Wayne Neon got almost everyone involved in his song. He invited Ben to play piano and Isaac to play harmonica. He said they’d be playing a skiffle song called “Wild About My Lovin” that was recorded by Jim Jackson in the 1930s and The Lovin Spoonful in the 1960s. I’m pretty sure it was actually written by Jim Jackson – “ … I’m wild about my lovin, I like to have my fun, If you’d like to be a girl of mine you’ve got to bring it with you when you come …” Wayne gave Isaac and Ben each a solo. During the song, Chris came over to my table, leaned down and asked me what was up with the guy with the camera. When I told him he’d just come to film me and then decided to shoot everyone else, Chris nodded and explained that he’d just wanted to know what was going on.

            Isaac was the last performer. He did his “Ballad of Sammy Yatim” – “ … Did they judge him by race … Nine bullets … The cops make you think they weren’t at fault …”

            Eugene was still in the room, talking to Isaac when I left the Tranzac.            

            One side of Bloor Street was closed off with safety cones. A cop stopped me and the rest of the westbound traffic while a tow truck hauled away a car. I think that the cones were there because they were creating the new Bloor Street bike lane.

Pregnant Freezer

           

            I didn’t have as much cycling competition as usual when I rode across the Bloor Viaduct on the Sunday evening of July 31st. Perhaps the other riders were away for the weekend.

            In Leaside, on the east side of Laird there are a lot of old warehouses that are slowly giving ground to office buildings and plazas. One warehouse just south of Wicksteed seems to be mostly abandoned, but there is a tiny newer looking wooden shack that extends from the old building out to the edge of the main sidewalk. There is no door and so one can see a filthy white couch and chair inside, surrounded by empty food packages. It definitely looks like someone has been sleeping in there. I poked my head inside and saw at the far end, beside the couch, a steep wooden step leading up to what must be a very tiny loft, where there is probably just enough room for someone to spread out a mat for sleeping. It’s odd because this hut is right on the main drag and extending out over half the sidewalk. It would be as if a building of the same size were sitting in front of my place on Queen Street.

            I rode east on Vanderhoof and then down Brentcliffe to Research Road. Traveling east again, behind some apartment buildings on Vanderhoof, I saw some interesting graffiti, so I stopped to investigate. The artwork was decorating a skate park that looked like it had been converted from a swimming pool. I took some photos. No one was skating, but one guy was sitting on the edge with his skateboard and I asked him if it had been built from scratch for skateboarding. He said it had. He looked like he was in his twenties but there were a couple of teenagers fixing their bikes. One of them asked if I had any tools with me, but all I had in my backpack were a pair of pliers.

            That night I watched the episode of I Love Lucy in which she tells Ricky that she’s pregnant, though they were forbidden to use the “p” word, so they just said, “expecting”. This of course corresponded to Lucy’s real pregnancy and apparently the tears of joy were not faked for the show.

            Speaking of pregnancy, the ice in my freezer had been continuously bulging out so much that it looked like it was going to give birth to a snowman. I started defrosting it and shoved all the milk in between the melting walls of ice so it wouldn’t go bad.

Bird on a Stoplight

         
            On the Saturday morning of July 30^th, a starling was drinking rainwater from the top of the traffic light outside my window.
            From the sensation in my mouth, I concluded that morning that a road crew had been working on it over night. My teeth felt like a grinder had rolled back and forth over them. On top of that my mouth was swampy and I still couldn’t brush until the afternoon.

            It was a relief to finally be able to rinse and brush, which I did before heading for my bike ride.

            Riding north on Broadview, I noticed some non-garbage had been left out on the curb, so I stopped to have a look.

            There were a lot of President’s Choice cloth shopping bags, as well as a few other cloth bags from other stores and also a large thermal bag for carrying cold or hot food, so I took most of those.

            There were lots of dishes and mugs and a small teapot with a matching cup, but I didn’t need any of that. I took a large, oven-safe plate.

            The only food item was an unopened box of Harvest Crunch. Maybe they threw it out because of nut allergies or because it was past it’s best before date. The expiry date was March 2015, but that’s not much different than the dates on the cereal I get from the food bank, so I took it.

            I continued my exploration of the industrial side of Leaside. I rode east on Commercial and then back west on Wicksteed.

            I decided to take my dentist’s advice and to not eat hot food or drink hot drinks for 48 hours after my surgery. So when I had my coffee I let it cool down to room temperature.

Everyone Should Use A Child's Toothbrush

 

            Friday July 29^th was the beginning of my fourth year of keeping this daily journal.

            Friday was also the day that I had to go to Smile City for oral surgery. My appointment was for 14:00 and I think the dentist saw me pretty much on time.

            Dr He started with the cleaning. First there was a lot of grinding away of the year’s accumulations.

Bogdan, the assistant, appears to be in training, The dentists at Smile City are all professionals but so far I’ve only experienced one assistant that seemed fully competent. Dr He had to remind Bogdan on at least two occasions that he has to be able to see the tooth that’s being worked on or the suction is useless.

After the grinding came the picking, which felt more like either prospecting or excavating. This led to the dentist asking me how often I brush my teeth. I told him twice a day. He asked if the toothbrush is hard or soft and I said that it felt pretty soft to me. He told me that I am either brushing too much or with too hard a brush because I’ve been damaging my teeth. He pointed out that there are abrasions, attritions and something else that sounded like “illusions”. He stressed to Bogdon that he will have to learn the terminology. He informed me that I need a softer toothbrush and told me that personally he uses a kid’s toothbrush because they are very soft. He said that when he was in Japan he found toothbrushes for adults that were as soft as those for children and he bought a hundred of them. He told me that they can’t be found in Canada. At the end, Dr He left the room and let Bogdon do the polishing. It felt like a sloppy job and on top of that there is no sink in that room for rinsing.

 When the cleaning was done, Dr He was about to say goodbye when I reminded him that he was going to do an extraction. I’d thought we’d decided it last time but I guess he hadn’t been sure that I’d made the decision to go along with it. He assured me that the procedure was necessary and that the tooth couldn’t be saved.

After the first needle, Dr He waited a minute or so, then poked certain places to see if I felt pain. In some places, to his surprise it seemed to me, I still did, so he gave me another needle. The numbness began to spread to the right edge of my tongue and the corner of my lip. I could even feel a little dull around my throat, but some places where he poked still caused some degree of pain. He applied some local anesthetic a couple of times and that did the trick. He told me that I’d only had two needles and that’s the average, but that some people require eleven needles before they stop feeling pain. I can’t imagine how intense the non-feeling would feel if I had been given eleven needles.

Dr He not only had to remove the last tooth in the lower right back of my mouth, but also needed to dig out all traces of the periodontal cyst that had been surrounding the tooth. There was a lot of blood in the end and so I had to bite hard on a balled up piece of gauze for a 40-minute period, twenty minutes of which continued after I got home.

Before I left, Dr He gave me a list of detailed typed instructions, but added some of his own by hand. I was very surprised by the main one, which said that I was not to brush, floss or rinse for 24 hours. It seemed to me that it should be alright to brush in the area where I hadn’t had the surgery, but he insisted that I not brush at all. He also said that I should not eat hot food or drink hot beverages for 24 hours, but suggested that it would be better if I extended those limitations to 48 hours. He added that I should never EVER use the Waterpik on the area where I’d had the surgery.

Twenty minutes after I got home I removed the ball of gauze. It was well stained with two shades of dark red. Dr He had given me another piece of gauze to ball up and shove into the same place if it was still bleeding there, but I didn’t need to.

The right side of my mouth was still frozen, and even my right eye felt a little bit numb. My right cheek looked like I was storing nuts inside of it.

At 17:00 I thought about taking a long bike ride and I felt strong enough to do it but the right side of my face was very uncomfortable and it would not have been an enjoyable ride. On the other hand, the ride might have taken my mind off of the discomfort. I also felt a little tired though so I thought that a siesta would be the more desirable option.

When I woke up an hour or so later the freezing was gone.

I watched an episode of I Love Lucy in which Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) sang. That woman could sing!

            It felt grimy and decadent to deliberately go to bed without brushing my teeth.

Making Room For Packrats or Hoarders Caused 9-11

           

            On the Thursday afternoon of July 28^th I went up to Cad and Goldie’s for my annual rearrangement of their storage lockers in order to make room for more of their junk. First of all though, they wanted me to assemble a little chest of drawers for their bathroom, made of canvas, metal pipes and plastic connectors. I found it very complicated to put together because of the two different kinds of connectors. I guess if I’d realized right away that one kind was for the middle it would have been quicker. Plus, the three of us were engaged in conversation the whole time I was working on it, which seems to have been about three hours. It was embarrassing to hear from them that Nick Cushing had put together their other one very quickly. I felt vindicated though when I saw that the one I did was a little more complicated, but Nick probably could have done this one faster as well.

            We talked a lot about the required changes in diet for people with diabetes. I made suggestions to Cad which I found out later were all wrong. I thought that diabetics could eat any kind of meat but didn’t realize that it has to be fat free. I also suggested that maybe gluten free spaghetti would be okay for diabetics but apparently not. Of course, just about anything is okay in moderation.

            We were talking about a mutual friend that needs a hernia operation. Cad thought that hernias are not covered by OHIP but I insisted that they are. That’s one medical subject that I was right about.

            Another thing they needed me to help them with is a coat rack that I put together for them a couple of years ago. Last year it needed to be reinforced with duct tape, but this year the whole shelf was leaning to one side. The only thing I could do was to put more tape on at a different angle: this time between the bottom of one side and halfway up the other. I warned them that this solution was very temporary and that what they really needed was a real solid metal coat rack.

            We didn’t have time to work on their storage locker, but Goldie gave me ten dollars for my help, along with a bottle of beer she had mysteriously acquired.

            I left there at around 19:00 and had a nice rain-free ride home.

            That night I watched a hilarious episode from the second season of “I Love Lucy” in which Lucy and Ricky get locked together with a pair of handcuffs for which there is no key. While they are waiting for a locksmith, Ricky has to appear on television, so he performs in front of a curtain with his right hand behind his back, but Lucy extends her right arm from under his armpit and does gestures with her hand to correspond with the words of his song. It kind of looks like something that was probably done years ago on vaudeville, but it was very clever anyway.

Bridging Coincidence

           

            On Wednesday, July 27^th, the weather forecast had said there was a 30% chance of rain, but there had been a lot of dry days all summer with the same possibility. I headed out for my bike ride that evening hoping that it would start raining before I got too far so I could go home and get caught up on my writing. But it didn’t and it was also quite hot down on the ground beneath the big, luminous and indecisive clouds.

            On Broadview a little girl was trying to pull her little bicycle with training wheels up the front steps of her house. She still hadn’t cleared the first step when I passed.

            As they say, “Wouldn’t you know it?” although how could anyone have known that just as I was at the north end of the Leaside bridge I started to feel raindrops. It was raining as I entered Leaside and it really started pouring. Since I was already soaked and the rain wasn’t cold, I figured I might as well finish the ride I’d intended to make. I turned right on Esandar Drive. There was a strong smell of some kind of herb or spice in the air as I passed the Amsterdam brewery. I don’t know if it was some kind of herbal beer ingredient that I was smelling or not. I followed Industrial Street up to Commercial Road and followed Industrial back to Laird, then headed back for the bridge.

            By a strange coincidence, as soon as I was back on the other side of the Leaside Bridge, the rain stopped. It got quite hot again almost immediately and I was starting to predict that all of my clothing, except of course for my shoes and socks, would be dry by the time I got home.

            I rode down Pape to Danforth, and one block west, at Gough, I stopped to use the washroom at Starbucks. When I was leaving it looked like they’d built the Starbucks inside of a waterfall. I stood under the coffee shop’s canopy and waited, because it looked like it was going to be another short downpour. I could still see plenty of blue between the clouds and when I leaned out to look west I could see blue behind the Toronto skyline. I waited about ten minutes, but the rain got more intense and the blue was replaced by grey, so I took my phone out of my pocket, stuffed it deep into my backpack so it wouldn’t get wet, and resigned myself to be an aquatic cyclist.

            At Broadview I got splashed by a car but the water was pleasantly warm.

            Another bizarre, bridge related coincidence was that the rain stopped again as I was crossing the Bloor Viaduct and the started again once I was on the other side.

            There were strange alternating pulses of warm and cool air as I rode into the heat rising from the sun baked concrete and sometimes through veins of a breeze that came down with the rain.

            The puddles that I splashed through were deep and warm, like a bath.

            There was a smell of freshly turned soil when I passed flowerbeds that were being hammered by the rain.

            Waiting at the light at York and Queen, a flattened Tim Horton’s cup floated slowly down a river in which my bike wheels were resting.

            When I got home, my shoes were loudly sloshing as I walked and my living room floor was soaked around my living room chair as I began to peel my juicy clothing off. I carried my shoes out back and dumped their contents on the deck.

            That night I started watching the second season of I Love Lucy. The first episode had the famous scene in which Lucy and Ethel were working on an assembly line as candy wrappers and as the belt starts to move faster and faster they start stuffing the candy in their mouths in order to keep it from getting past them.

The Guy With The Bike

           

            On Wednesday, July 27^th, the food bank line-up existed but had yet to take form. I positioned myself after the three women who were chatting furthest back from the door, though I wasn’t sure exactly where I stood.

            When it got close to 10:00, the line snapped in place. Julie, one of the women that had been chatting, had also been paying attention, and redirected two or three people to their proper place in line. Margaret was behind her and she told three people their positions behind me, or as she called me, “The guy with the bike”. So it looks like I’ve been identified. I thanked her for clearing things up. I said, “Sometimes I get confused.” Margaret, thinking that I was referring to a general condition of being confused, responded in a sympathetic tone, “That’s all right! Nobody’s perfect!”

            While I was at reception giving my name and year of birth so the guy could find my file on the computer, the vegetable lady came to the refrigerator just to my right and had overheard my year of birth. “One year before me!” she said. I noticed their fridge had several bricks of butter in it but in my experience they’ve never given any to food bank clients.

            I got number 14 and then rode to No Frills to buy milk for my coffee. On my way home, I passed three bike cops, chatting as they rode together. Come to think of it, I rarely see bicycle policemen that aren’t shooting the breeze with one another. I went into the centre lane to make a left turn from King onto Dunn Avenue, but was stopped by the traffic light. The pedal cops had the same idea and were lined up like ducks behind me as I waited. The only snippet of their ongoing conversation that I picked up before I turned and left them behind was when one of them said, “I’d rather work New Years than Caribana!”

            A couple of hours later, when my number was called, my helper was Bruce, who was sweating from and struggling with the heat.

            From the top of the first set of shelves I took a can of turkey gravy.

Below that shelf there were more bagged snacks and crackers than usual and I picked a bag of Red Curry Kettle Chips.

            From the bottom shelf there was a small bag of mini Ritz Bits cheese sandwiches and Bruce gave me a couple of handfuls of Fibre 1 lemon bars.

            I skipped the pasta shelf and the one with the canned beans, but I did take a can of organic lentil vegetable soup.

            Below the soup were a choice of artificially sweetened ice tea and cans of the healthier brown rice smoothy. I told Bruce that I’d take the smoothy and declared, “Those are good!” I think I remembered them as being good because they are sweetened with cane sugar and have some other healthy ingredients even though they really taste like a combination between medicine and ass. Bruce said that he liked them too and that they were good cold. He gave me two.

            I took a box of Shreddies from the last set of shelves.

            In the cool section there was a choice between four small Activia yogourts and a bag of chocolate milk. I took the yogourt.

            The closest thing to meat they had this time were a couple of beef patties.

            The best items they had were a couple of nice Longos salads in plastic containers. One was a Tuscany bean salad and the other a cranberry quinoa pumpkin seed salad.

            I was totally out of bread at home so I took one whole-wheat and one raisin loaf.

            The vegetable lady gave me some potatoes, a cucumber, a little bag of strawberries, and a bag of pea sprouts. She also still had lots of fresh vegetables from the community garden, such as kale, leaf lettuce, and young onion bulbs. Instead of putting them in my cloth bag from No Frills, I told her to wait while I got my plastic bag ready. She told me, “You know how to shop!”

Sink Girl in Malta

           

            While riding east on Bloor Street, on my way to the Shab-e She’r reading series, a woman wearing niqab stepped partly out onto the road a little bit in front of me. I called, “Watch out!” but she either ignored me, perhaps because she’s not supposed to respond to strange men or she didn’t know I was calling to her. I got the impression that she hadn’t seen me because a niqab must be similar to a mask in that it blinds or limits peripheral vision. It seems to me that it’s kind of a dangerous thing to be wearing when one is walking in traffic. Of course, some niqabs allow for more peripheral vision, but this one seemed to just have eyeholes for vision.

            I could smell the aroma of sage as I approached the front door of the Beit Zatoun Gallery. I don’t know if they’d put it in their tea or their coffee. I think they put coriander in the coffee.

            When Bänoo Zan began compiling the open mic list, someone made a special request to go earlier, so Banoo stepped away from her usual mysterious order and allowed the woman to read in the first half. Norman Allen was next in line, and Banoo asked him if he had any preferences as well. He answered that he had lots of preferences but he wasn’t going to impose them on her.

            Speaking into the microphone, Bänoo made an effort to encourage new people read on the open stage, saying, “You will be very lucky if you choose to read!” I asked her if that meant that the less new one happened to be the less lucky they were. I think that by being “lucky” she meant that those new people that read would achieve the luck that is already experienced by those that aren’t new.

            The room was about three-quarters full at a little after the official start time of 19:00.

            Bänoo welcomed the audience “to the most inclusive poetry reading in Toronto, and probably the whole world!” She declared, “Wow! What a great audience! Look around you and see the diversity!” She listed some diverse groups that were represented there, such as ethnicity and sexual orientation. But I wonder how would one really know someone’s sexual orientation unless one was told or unless one saw them having sex?

            Bänoo said that Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities, but though people go to each other’s restaurants and musical events, they don’t listen to each other.

            The first open miker that Bänoo called was Brenda Clews, who announced that she’d just had her first book published.

            Her poem was entitled “Golden Trap” – “The sky trapped in clouds … Crystals breaking on pavement … I tap on the laptop by the window of an Italian café … The woman haunting her odd responses … Her hair like seaweed, pulled back loosely … She moves like an exotic figment of fabric, or that ruby rising out of a ring of melted cast gold … Open her closet, and on the floor, flaming red, slick knee-high boots … a vermilion hat … a funerary dirge of black dresses … Her garden is unkempt, unweeded, like writing that chokes … or Aubrey Beardsley’s version of Salome …  Her fish bones were broken … Are there any true stories … Help me break free of the undertow … inside the sharp beak that belabours my writing … Why can’t I go elsewhere?”

            Next was Hari Kumar, who read a poem called “Weight of Memory” – “When you think of it, it is just data. Data is weightless … When you erase messages from your mobile phone, do you expect it to become lighter?”

            After Hari, Joanne Deane read a poem that she’d written that afternoon, called “Life and Death” – “Isn’t it all too much? I almost got hit from the left before the streetlights were installed … I jump, shake, cringe … I have an escape to the river … Death waits for me to re-armour myself … I walk with the trees … I drop my shield … Death and I relax.”

            Then Mireille Shenouda read two poems. The first was called “Young At Heart”. The second one was in french, and had a similar, positive message.

            Following Mireille was Abdu Wahab, who introduced himself as being from Iraq, Kurdistan. He began with a quote from Rumi – “Close both eyes to see with the other eye.” From his own poem – “There is no face without a mirror, echoes are the only answer … Eyes are catapults that hurl stones of love deep into the fossilized existence … Heartbeats are the roots of oak trees … heart is an iceberg … only the eyes are showing …”

            Next was Donna Langevin, who told us that her poem was a palindrome – “An old yarn: the stork carries a blanket in her beak. That’s how you came into the world. Rewinding my grandmother’s yarn: That stork will carry my old woman’s soul.”

            Miriam Lopez read “Resettlement – “To all refugees in North Lebanon … Schoolbags and children pile inside the mini-van … The sheep kicking the last kicks … Sandbags and razor wire … Glorified diamonds … An ice-cream truck … Winter was brutal … Once more, celebration is stronger than any army protocol.”

            More people were arriving, and so Banoo asked for anyone that had a free seat next to them to raise their hand.

            Norman Allan read a piece of short fiction – “In 1970, Bill Crow was a graduate student … After the Indian wars, the army herded the Cheyenne into two camps … Bill was a student during the Vietnam War … He decided to come to Canada and do post-graduate work … His grammy asked, “You’ll come back for the war, won’t you?”

            Aparna Halpe, before reading, explained that she dances Argentine tango. She told us that just as Murielle’s poem in French was about nostalgia, so would be her poem, entitled, “Four Seasons in Toronto seen as Tangos” – “Summer in the city … Misha enters the line at Kennedy … The trowel abandoned … in the brief measure of a dream … A long distance traveller far too far from yearning … His fingers flicker and begin the hesitant … a different storm.”

            From Karen Lee we heard – “You disappear behind shining eyes … Hold the other in … gaze … Ancestors … When you first knew … In the span of a kiss, I become a piece of sand … Only the love gaze, fluent, freeing, strong as silk … Blaze widen soft tissue … Leaves seethe crisp gossip … Grow love in warm, honeyed light … In the span of a kiss I become a pearl of dew …”

            Then it was time for our first featured reader.

            John Portelli is from Malta. He writes his poetry in Maltese and he has friends that do his translations for him.

            His first poem was called “I Was Asked”. He first read it in Maltese and then in English – “I was asked am I from Romania. Lebanon? Are you by chance a Jew? Salaam! Are you a Muslim? Perhaps my thick, black hair … What a heavy accent you have … He stamped the passport … How come you did not tell me you are Canadian?”

            From his second poem – “The river of bombs … Blinded by choice … Motive after motive … without an end …”

            John explained that Maltese is a Semitic language that is written in Latin script.

            He told us that his next poem was for a Palestinian poet who wrote to him after reading his last book. From “To Walid Nahab” – “I see you every day, briskly walking towards her in a light veil … Once there was a Palestine … Loving her as if you have not yet found your love … You are born to bear love … The prophets are no longer obsessed and scrupulous … Zenga Zenga … Today you are still here … hovering in the fields of your land.”

            John explained that the above line, “zenga zenga” was a reference to Gaddafi, though he didn’t go into detail. I looked it up later and found that it’s from a speech that Gaddafi made on television in February of 2011. He spoke about hunting down protesters and repeated the phrase “zenga zenga”, which in Libyan dialect was expressing an Arabic phrase that meant “alleyway by alleyway”. An Israeli musician took the speech and autotuned it to Pit Bull’s “Hey Baby”, then put it up on YouTube where it went viral.

            Next John read, “Playing the Pots” – “I hear the clanging of the pots and pans … He threatened you with water cannons … Bang the pots … Play a rhythm to Erdogan.”

            From “Blood” – “The goose flesh cried of a blood-worried soul … Blood generated blood … Nothing could quench it that day.”

            From “Forever Unbounded” – “Last week I was asked, ‘How do your students understand …’ … I see and feel the pain of the anger of a foreigner … Strange accents … Have a nice day.”

            From “To My Mother” – “I killed my mother almost 39 years ago … I ran away almost without luggage … From the distant land I could not bury my mother.”

            From “Arab Spring” – “ … Waiting for the gulls … The waves enjoy themselves … People sunbathe … An Arab spring.”

            From another poem – “I guess when you live in a country like Lebanon … the runways in fragments, the streets smashed to pieces … You believe you will find a road still level … How do you sleep with bombs over your head every day ….”

            From “The Bread of Pragmatism” – “The smooth sea sparkles, a mirror of tomorrow … Death spreads itself out on the horizon …”

            John introduced a poem, and it sounded like he said it was called “Delodos” and that “Delodos” means “the south wind” in Turkish. But when I looked it up I found “Lodos” but not the “de” sound in front of it. From “Lodos” – “Lodos blows, rippling the waters of the Bosphorus …”

            From “I Remember” – “I remember in my childhood the passionate cry, ‘British go home!’ Today I visit Malta of the EU and hear ‘Africans go home!’”

            From “I Am Enraged” – “I am enraged at the arrogance of neo-liberalism … the kiss of Judas … The game of evidence brings fatalism to seed … I am enraged for the fucked up promises … The foam spins from my mouth … How many cries must we hear … Those who regard everyone else as if they were flies … The elitism of liberalism …”

            John then said he would read a haiku, but clarified that it is more specifically a senryū, which is constructed like a haiku, but rather than capturing a moment in time, offers a human observation – “marketed man / so enchanted by rigor / even rigor mortis”.

            John’s final poem was entitled “All In A Row” – “A row of colourful crowds promenade on the streets of Ankara in Istanbul … lodging itself like an email in junkmail.”

            John Portelli’s poetry is more about sentimental and political observations in verse form than any attempt to be artistic or innovative with his use of language. I did though think that his senryū was interesting and would have liked to hear more, if he has any.

            Bänoo excitedly announced that Shab-e She’r had broken its attendance record this night, with 103 people.

            She called a fifteen-minute break and most everyone packed themselves thickly at the front of the room near the coffee, tea and snacks. The blended conversations were like that from an amplified beehive. Some of the attendees had left after the first feature, but there were still a lot of people.

            When the break was finished, most everyone was still standing and chatting at the front. Bänoo spoke to them through the microphone, “I know that you are all having wonderful conversations, but could you please take your seats?”

            As a warm-up for the second featured reader, Bänoo selected Transient from the open mic list to come up and do a short reading.

            From Transient’s piece – “ … Dorothy was shocked at who stays a virgin … You have to swipe your v-card before the end of first year … I was part of that group … breaking bread with the man that broke your consent … The devil is in the details … She cries rape … Is she awake … I wasn’t awake … I was high … The grapevine was blurry and I was in a hurry … Even if someone says yes, unconscious means no … Where was the human at that table we were breaking bread at …”

            The second feature was slam poet, Kay Kassirer. She performed barefoot, just like Anne Murray used to do.

            Kay gave us a “trigger warning”, saying that she would be covering topics that some people might find distressing. It seems to me that one of the main reasons to write or listen to poetry is because it’s somewhat distressing, so I don’t quite understand the point of being warned about it beforehand. Most of us didn’t come to be lulled to sleep with pleasantries. Also, according to most experts in trauma, the worst thing a victim can do is avoid triggers.

            Kay began – “I am your postcard, borderline kid … Doctors say I’m high functioning. I only function when I’m high … I’m restless and moody … I’m too Gay to think straight.”

            Her next piece was “Stonewall 1969” – “A series of riots that started the LGBT riots … We cannot forget Marsha P. Johnson … She threw the first brick … They beat her back in the closet … The life expectancy of Black trans women is only 35 … In order to be placed on gender reassignment therapy one has to be diagnosed … Why is being trans still a diagnosis … A Black trans woman who fought until they locked her in a men’s prison … When these women fought, they were fighting for everyone, yet people think the “T” should be removed from the acronym …”

            From “Sink Girl Part 1 - Belonging” – “I long to feel your lips pressed against mine … Doing Sudoku puzzles together in pen … Lt’s go on a road trip with no destination … I want to make memories of you … the same lips that you’ve memorized …”

            From Kay’s next piece – “Trauma gets passed down through generations … My grandparents were Jews … We know anxiety, we who cry at everything except funerals … We are scientifically proven to have less cortisol … Maybe this is why I can’t handle the stress of getting dressed in the morning… The intergenerational effects of genocide will blow your mind … No matter how hard my body tries to hold its breath … despite the years we were not allowed to sing along …”

            She seems to be implying that Jews in general have less cortisol, but the study she seems to be citing only found this to be the case among Jews that descend from Holocaust survivors. There are Jews from other backgrounds that show very high levels of cortisol.

            From “Sink Girl Part 2 – Shooting Stars and Fireworks” – “I should have known better than to fall for you … Remember the night we broke the frame … kissing like we need each others’ lips to breathe … I remember our ‘to be continued’ … I am getting more hung up on you … I am tired of dreaming that I am with you … you have … the ability to create butterflies in my stomach and clip their wings … Where did I go wrong … You’re probably fast asleep with her in your arms.”

            Kay brings a picture of her with her mother at a Passover Seder to every performance and places it on the floor in front of her – “I am bringing my mother to this stage tonight, tonight I am bringing her back … I can still see me and my sister holding my mom’s hand … My first poetry slam … Look Mom, I won! The pride in her eyes, the smile on her face …”

            From her next piece – “Maybe I’m lying about being okay … I don’t have to see the pity behind your eyes … Ever since my mom passed … I’m not telling these stories … Obviously I am not fine … Everyone keeps trying to make it better … If you want someone happy I am probably not the person you are looking for … I tried to write you a poem, but I don’t know your stories yet … I am the king, only able to move one spot at a time … I have a tough body, but a fragile mind … I just need a little help … That was how far I got in this poem before I broke up … I will make sure you never hear it …She totally did hear it … Even pens used to create words of hate can write beautiful poetry on the same page …”

            From “A Letter to My Borderline – A Letter to Myself” – “That’s how we love sometimes, we tend to do things backwards … I forgive you for all of the scars … I am learning to love you … I am exhausted from existing …”

            From another piece – “ There is a girl who used to date a boy who used to date me … forced him to break up with me … He started to believe that no one could find him beautiful … My therapist told me it’s probably PTSD … This trauma does not feel like my own … Nobody wants to hear about the queer beauty being toxic … I am scared she will hurt my friends … devil’s horns under her backward baseball cap … Queer people can still be toxic … I don’t care if we play for the same team, we still have to follow the rules.”

            From another piece – “The first time we ever had sex with a cysgender man … for him it was as if all the girls I’d had sex with didn’t count … It’s not like some didn’t make me come … unlike him … He asked me if I was a virgin … ‘A virginity … Look at what I took!’ …”

            Kay told us that if we buy the book we will find out how the poem “Sink Girl” got its name.

            “Sink Girl Part 4” as her last poem – “We were sitting by the river admiring the water … LSD fresh on tongue … I said, ‘listen, can’t you hear it in the night?’ … Do you remember when you taught me to feel the colours … I could hear the colours. They sounded like your voice … I love with my eyes wide open … You taught me that love isn’t urgent … You taught me that distance doesn’t mean ending …”

            Kay Kassirer has a lot of important things to say, but to a great extent her urge to do so conflicts with her aspirations of being a poet. Great lines like “kissing like we need each others lips to breathe” and “the ability to create butterflies in my stomach and clip their wings” get buried in what sounds like a lot of uncreative talk, ranting and self-therapy. She should build poems around her good lines because they have the potential to become good poems that way and her a better poet.

            Bänoo returned right away to the open mic and the first poet she called was Jordan Chiang, who read from his phone – “Hydroxy alpha, Sichuan peppercorns …  Aint no fuckin pagoda poems here … Are you disappointed by the failure of a culture … Watch it waive the strategy of coolies … and you’re blathering the song … not Sichuanese.”

            Next we heard from Rose Perry, who read her poem, “Post Humanism, Maybe” – “Processed parcases … Genetical switch … Ideologues who don’t know any better … Family, friends, government, the normalcy bias … The new status quo projected forward … A boogie man in every corner … You are the only atom in the universe … You wear the mask of normalcy … The superb technician … metaphysical obstructions … You were rendered null and void from the beginning … The truth is no defense … A. I. is mapping your frequencies … The profane surrounds you, sleepwalking your life into the netherland loaded with death and destruction … Pure fantasy as promised by a reality shift into a higher state …”

            I was after Rose. As I walked to the front with my guitar, I overheard a woman who’d been sitting front of me say to her friend, “He’s good! Have you …”

I decided for this night, because of the number of people, to use the microphone when I sang my poem, “Paranoiac Utopia” – “ … I tip-toe cross a nervous battlefield through a crossfire of uptight cops and frazzled addicts. Each thinks I’m on the other side and that there’s no such thing as not giving a shit … The paranoia is so thick it can cut you with a knife, and even the pigeons are suspect as it looks under discarded burger wrappers for spies and stifles thought to stop a psychic phone-tap. A breeze is blowing the sunlight through the slow motion funnel of the afternoon and Parkdale’s paranoia’s disappeared. Did a young boy’s shooting briefly muffle its spastic song of fear? Whoever doesn’t share our hell must be the devil, they believe. Each greeting is a curse and kind words are an even greater evil. Queen Street West is slippery with ice in summer weather and amidst all this blindness I feel I can see forever …” After trying that piece several times at both the Tranzac open stage and Fat Albert’s over the last few months and getting nothing, I finally got a very good reaction from the audience at Shab-e She’r.

            Cate Laurier read “Snakeskin” – “Running to not stand still with frozen fear … Escape the labyrinth of the past … accusing me with glassy glares … The piercing pain … like a hungry wolf seeking its prize … It doesn’t prevent my endless arrest … Is it time then to just stop running from who I am … Be the snake shedding my outworn skin … Do snakes cry when they shed their old lives?”

            Then we heard from Ross McFarlane, who told us that he was visiting from Scotland and urged us to come and check out Glasgow’s amazing poetry scene. From his poem –“ … Come sit on the steps, we’ll huddle up for warmth … This is our world and it’s fucking mundane …”

            Kath Jonathan read “A True History of Words” – “One day continents went to work until every border was religion … Years passed … words died out … then music bathed every tree … Drums traded arguments and hymns … Sitars wept with accordions … Language of cults … Everyone except the dung beetle … Poetry mapped its DNA.”

            Sidney White read “No More Nice Girl” – “Men in white lace and white slippers who divide us into hookers and virgins … Men who slither through academia … How dare you condescend to me … Fuck you shima!”

            Eugene Styles read – “ … Surround the invisible line of my imagination … Rhythm of the  … inner sanctum is the beauty scene … Water the flower in your heart.”

            Naomi read – “Indigenous maze of concrete utterances where the residue hides with elements of rapture in a pool of consciousness … The spells of time bleeding in hymns consume the particles raining with tears, the prophet is vanishing under a carpet of blue ether.”

            Nick Miceli came to the stage with a tongue drum, which he played with mallets while reciting his story of “The Humming Bird and the Draft Horse” – “Hummingbird hovers, so still and serene … harmonious laughter … Hummingbird offers the finest of art … Horse keeps on plodding, staying close to the earth … Hummingbird reaches horizons of joy … Horse keeps on plodding, constant and true, looks up and sees the sun …”

            Laura DeLeon read “From the Grave” – “ … Religion is self taught … Now it is time to open your eyes to other states of consciousness … The outermost framework of the innermost being.”

            Then Laura read “In the Sphere of Love” – “ … I was called into being … awaiting the relentless tide …”

            Dan Jiang read a poem called “The Golden Arrows of Anatta’s Poems” but first informed us that “Anatta” means “no self”– “Anatta, the archer and arrow … drip heavenly delight … leave moments of awe and openness … for a moment or two.”

            Matthew Johnston read something that he wrote while sitting in the audience and confessed that he had writer’s block until then – “The lake darkens and scoops the sand away … I called you up from the water … We suckled sand … I tore my lip on a shard … It fit my wound on a plaster …”

            Our last reader, Graham Sanders, is a professor of classical Chinese literature, and he read a poem by Du Fu, first in Chinese and then in English. He assured Jordon, who had read earlier, that there would not be a pagoda in sight in the poem. – “Drops of jade dew wilt and wound … Billows and breakers turn up to the sky … A lonely boat … a heart’s longing for home … Dusk quickens the washing stone.

            Bänoo, in closing, mentioned the two reading series that ended their runs forever in June.

In my words, “Big shot readings with big teams: dead”

In Bänoo’s words, “What keeps a reading series alive is the audience.”

            While I was helping put the chairs away, Rose approached me and told me that my song was hilarious. With concealed sarcasm I said, “Yes, it was meant to be humorous.” Before I left, Sidney White also told me that my piece about Parkdale was “fun”. I suppose they are both right, about parts of the poem.

Stagolee: In the Old Songs the Bad Guys Were Bad

           

            When I arrived at the Tranzac on the night of July 25^th, a drummer was doing one of those obligatory but useless solos that jazz drummers do.

            There were a few people seated and listening to the trio that consisted of Jessie Barrett on drums, Rebecca Hennessy on trumpet and Chris Banks on double bass, but I was the first performer there for the open stage, so the new bartender had to make up a list for me.

The monthly event of Chris Banks and Friends was just wrapping up and they were trying to decide what to play for a final song. Rebecca suggested a number to which they all agreed, but Chris hesitated until he finally said, “I don’t ant to put a wrench in the works, but why don’t we do it with a slow, Latin feel?” They were all more than fine with that.

When I noticed that Eric Sedore was sitting in the tall corner table by the entrance, I went over to wish him a “Birthday, birthday!” and shook his hand. He’d brought a container full of butter tarts he’d made, and offered me one, which I took for later.

            There was hardly anyone in the Southern Cross Bar at around the time the open stage was supposed to start. Abigail Lapel, our host, arrived and set up the sound, then she went outside. After a few minutes she returned with a small entourage of women that included Sarah Greene.

            Abigail sat in front of the microphone and said, “We are here at the Tranzac for one purpose and for one purpose only. To watch me tune my guitar.”

            She began with “Wheat Kings” by the Tragically Hip, with harmonies by Laura Spink, who read the lyrics off of her phone – “Sundown in the Paris of the prairies … All you hear are rusty breezes pushing around the weathervane Jesus. In his Zippo lighter he sees the killer’s face … Twenty years for nothing, well that’s nothing new. Besides, no one’s interested in something you didn’t do …”

            Her second song was a new one of her own to which Laura sang a nice harmony in round style – “If I had a dollar to my name, I’d be a rich man all the same … I’m just a poor old soldier with the weight of the world on my shoulder …”

            The first performer from the list was Isaac Bonk, and he began with his ballad of Sammy Yatim – “ … He held his place … All the officers faced … that he wanted to kill … but that was not the case … They aimed at his brain … The boy of eighteen was not sane … The tension it grew … the bullets they flew … Sam lay dead, all covered in red … Nine bullets he was fed … The blood on their hands, oh it’s too much to stand …”

            Isaac’s second song was the one he wrote about a girl that was sexually abused by her father and later became a prostitute.

            Abigail said, “We just got bonked!”

She took a moment to explain why she was hosting on this night.  She told us that she usually hosts the Tranzac open stage on the fourth Monday of a five Monday month, but this time she was replacing Yawd Silvester. She would be back again in her regular schedule on August 22.

Next was Ben Bootsma, who wanted the monitors off. He used the house guitar for his first song and pointed out that there are several signatures on the instrument from respected Toronto musicians. He said it was available for us to sign. Abigail said she would sign it but Ben said he hadn’t signed it yet. I wondered, “What if one’s signature diminishes the value of the guitar?”

Before Ben’s first song he gave us a bit of commentary on ethics as represented in the song, “Stagolee”. He said that in modern or post-modern interpretations, bad people are good. But in the old songs, bad is bad – “ … Police officer, how can it be, you can arrest everybody but Stagolee … What I care about your two little babies and your darling lovely wife, you done stole my Stetson hat so I’m bound to take your life …”

For his second song, Ben switched to the piano. He struggled with the microphone and commented that he keeps forgetting to bring his roadie. Ben sang one of his own songs – “On the most lonely night, the memory of your confidence and the reasons that were common sense are the tune that you just can’t recall … How could you know that the people you chose were the same as the ones you let down … “

I was after Ben, and started with my translation of Jacques Brel’s  “Amsterdam” – “ … In the port of Amsterdam there are sailors who are dying, full of beer and drama, as the sun is rising. But in the port of Amsterdam there are sailors who are borning, from the warm womb of the languorous ocean …”

My second choice was my own “Paranoiac Utopia”  - “ … I take a ride upon the bad ship donut shop so it can ferry me across a hostile ocean of time, I am a ghost but only part and pass painfully through borderlines …”

Then it was time for Eric Sedore, who went to the piano, telling us that the only other time he’d ever played piano in front of people was once at his grandmother’s house.

Eric began with a Mountain Goats song entitled “Genesis 30:3” – “ … The visitors were here … we watched them disappear … Wherever it was you came from, the power in your voice … You keeping watch …”

Eric told us that exactly a year ago he was in Guelph, attending the Hillside Festival. He wrote a song called “Guelph Lake” about how he felt on his birthday that day – “There is a bus I could have taken, but I chose to walk … I got to the lake, I made a little wish and the ground began to shake and drop off over the cliff … The end of the night I walked back to my car … No one could see that I was breaking apart … There was a bus I could have taken but I made it this far.”

Next up were Maggie and Mr Rogers. Abigail asked which of them was Maggie and which was Mr Rogers. They performed what they said were two new songs for them. The first was Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” – “Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving … How can they know it’s time for them to go? Before the winter fire I will still be dreaming. I have no thought of time … Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving … But I will still be here …” Maggie enunciates very formally when she sings.

Mr Rogers switched to the ukulele for their second offering, which was “Harlem” by The Stray Birds – “My city’s had a lot of trouble sleeping, she’s up all night … Scraping stars from the sky … made a habit of crying all through the night … My sleepless city, I’ll do her sleeping for free … I love my city … She can do my crying for me. My city’s picking fights across the water with the worn out moon …”

After Maggie and Mr Rogers came Matt, who borrowed Abigail’s guitar and seemed to be improvising a very short, gentle piece. He followed that with another and then we were at the end of the open stage.

Abigail asked for requests for one final song, so I spoke up about a Daniel Lanois song in French that I’d heard her sing last time she was there. She agreed to do it, but first of all apologized for her French, which took me by surprise, because of her last name and because she is from Montreal, and I’d always assumed that French was her first language. Her pronunciation seemed excellent to me when she sang “O Marie” – “Y a quelqu’un qui appelle mon nom … On travaille aujourdhui, on travaille sous la pluie, On travaille au tabac hostie, mais mains sont noires a cochon … Trente jours et trente nuits … Qui ma blonde elle attend après mois … Je vais retourner avec beaucoup d’argent … Oh driver donne moi une chance … Avez-vous de feu pour ma cigarette … Ce soir on va au village … Chanter la chanson, boire la boisson  … O Marie, j’ai mal a la tete … Donnez-nous l’esprit, l’esprit du corps … le bleu du ciel a change … après quarante jours et quarante nuits, on ne peut pas travailler au tabac …”

Here’s my translation: “I can hear somebody calling my name, I’m working all the time under rain or burning bright, picking tobacco, Jesus Christ, hands all black from tobacco stains, 30 days and 30 nights. My girlfriend’s been waiting many weeks, but I’ll be returning with pockets full of cash, oh driver please give me a break, have you got a light for my cigarette, Tonight we’ll go to the village, we’ll sing a few songs and drink some grog, oh Marie there’s an ache in my head, give me the strength, the strength to go on, the sky has turned grey and cold, after 40 days and 40 nights, I can’t pick any more tobacco.”

            I chatted with Eric for a while outside the Tranzac, then he went to his car and I went to my bike.

A Visit to the Dentist

           

            At 9:30 on Monday, July 25^th, I called the dentist to make the soonest possible appointment. I was offered a choice between a 15:30 appointment or I could come to the walk-in clinic before 14:00. I asked what the difference was and she told me that with the walk-in I might have to wait for an hour and a half. I guess if I’d been in pain I might have chosen the walk-in, but since this was more of an aesthetic emergency, the only pain would have come from the waiting.

            I took an early one-hour siesta before heading out.

            I rode up Lansdowne, which is still receiving repairs, but that was good because there was no oncoming traffic from the north to intrude on me making a left turn on Dundas. I took Dundas all the way to Bloor, where my dentist’s office is on the north west block. It looks like they’ve changed their company name from Dentistry with Care to Smile City Dental. That’s certainly a better name to stick with, though I wish they were able to stick with one dentist that I could get used to. As it is, I pretty much end up with a different delegate of the United Nations of dentistry every year. The first time I came I had the very nice Shelly Pang, but then she had immigration problems and had to go back to Vietnam. Next I had this horrible dentist from India with her clumsy assistant from Latin America. Then for two years in a row I had the very good Dr Max, who was from somewhere in Eastern Europe, with a very good assistant who had been a dentist back home in Venezuela but wasn’t qualified yet to be one in Canada. Dr Max moved on up to a better practice in Oakville. The next year I had Dr Thomas, with the same assistant, and I think he was even better than Dr Max. He was definitely from south Asia and when he gave me his card there was a long Indian name crossed out with “Dr Thomas” written in. This time around I had a new dentist named Dr He. It was too bad that Dr He wasn’t a woman, because I could write a whole Abbott and Costello skit around the name, especially if the assistant’s name was She. “Who’s your dentist? He is! Who? He! Where is he? Right there! That’s a she! No, She is his assistant! Who’s the dentist then? He is!” and so on.

I was fifteen minutes early but his tall and young assistant called for me before I was settled in the waiting area.

            Dr He confirmed that it was my filling that broke off. He was more concerned though about the area around the only tooth I have left in the back on the lower right side. He said that it’s loose and that the paradental pocket beside it has gotten deeper. He said we needed to take x-rays and so his assistant left the room. I waited and then Dr He said for me to follow his assistant. It was the first time I’d had to go to a different room to get x-rays at that clinic. The x-ray room was sort of white like the other rooms but they don’t seem to care about maintaining it as much, since it needed a paint job and many of the floor tiles were cracked and ragged. After a couple of uncomfortable poses I was back in He’s room.

            The x-rays showed that I had a paradental cyst around the loose tooth and that it could spread if the tooth was not removed. He also told me that I should get a denture to replace it because without a tooth beneath them the upper teeth would grow longer. That didn’t make sense to me because I had some teeth removed when I was a teenager and I didn’t notice any extra growth from above. He showed me with a mirror that some of my upper teeth have indeed grown down, but still, that has been over several decades. At the age of sixty-one, should I be worried about upper teeth growing down over the next thirty years?

I wouldn’t say that the assistant was incompetent, but I didn’t get the impression that he had lot of experience. Quite often when the dentist asked for an instrument either by name or by number, he didn’t know which one to hand him and so Dr He had to describe it, often with a touch of impatience in his voice, as in, “No, the round one!” Or, “No the thinner one!” When the dentist left the room to check whether I had the insurance to cover the filling, the assistant was still in the room. I asked his name and he told me it was Bogdon. I inquired if he’d been doing this very long and he said, “No, not really.” He told me that he was actually a dentist in the Ukraine but that he needs more training to be qualified to work in Canada. That seems to be the story with quite a few of the assistants at Smile City.

            Anyway, He repaired my filling and he said that I needed to make another appointment to get a cleaning and to have the lower back tooth removed. But there was a question about my Green Shield coverage, because it only covers a percentage of the cost. I’d always thought Smile City price was already a discount because it always balances out to me paying nothing. They had to check with Green Shield before I could make the appointment, so I waited ten minutes. They found out that Green Shield has the same coverage for me as in previous years. It seems that the dentists just choose to take a cut in some cases like mine in order for me to pay nothing, though it probably means they are still making plenty of money out of it. They gave me an appointment for Friday.