Confessionalism

            Since I’d gone to bed early on Monday night, I woke up early on Tuesday morning and got up at 4:00. I did about half an hour’s work on my English essay before starting yoga. After yoga I worked on it for another hour, but since I had to work from 10:00 to 13:00, and I didn’t want to be sleepy while posing, I went back to bed from 7:30 to 8:30. Though I didn’t sleep much I did doze a bit and while just resting I rolled some ideas around about my essay. When I got up I had about five minutes before I had to start getting ready to leave. I put my essay on a flashdrive so I could work on it with my laptop during the coffee break.

            I left home at a little after 9:15. While riding up Brock, I noticed there was a plane flying west and it was pulling a banner that read, “Sorry Toronto!” A couple of minutes later an identical plane came flying east but attached to it was a banner with an even stranger message: “!otnoroT yrroS”. Not long after that another plane exactly like the other two came directly over my head in a southerly direction, but behind it there was nothing but a long red thread.

I looked it up the next day and discovered that the cryptic message was sponsored by Montreal Tourism in anticipation of their 375^th birthday celebration that apparently will be going on all through 2017. The message was meant to communicate, “Sorry in advance for the noise, but we will be throwing a big party next year!” Apparently they staged a similar stunt over New York City. There was so much news about events that are going on all year round that it was hard to track down the actual birth date of Montreal. The actual city of Montreal is less than 200 years old, but the date that lines up to 375 is the founding of the community of Ville Marie on May 17, 1642. Montreal has always been an extravagant city in its spending, but they are going whole hog for this party. Compare the $200 million they are spending to the piddly 250,000 that cheap Toronto budgeted for its 175^th birthday in 2009.

When I got to 604 Markham Street in Mervish Village and walked down the alley, I could see that the light was on in the basement where the ladies of Studio 1181 have their studio. I knocked on the door but there was no answer, so I assumed that someone had simply forgotten to turn the light off. I went to stand in front of Vintage Video and waited for Jane’s car to pull up. It was at that point that I thought about my essay and I realized that despite bringing along my flashdrive, I’d actually forgotten to bring my laptop. What an idiot! I went back a couple more times to knock on the door, but still there was no answer.

On the steps of the Rock Store next door there was a black squirrel eating a piece of burnt toast. It was squatting back on its hind legs and had to spread its front “arms” wide in order to hold onto the overdone bread slice as it nibbled the crust and turned the toast in its “hands” as it moved its mouth along, only interested in the crust. Suddenly it looked at me and dropped the bread but instead of running away it came closer to look at me, standing taller on its hind legs and sniffing. I think it was used to people feeding it and was expecting something better than burnt toast from me. I remembered that I had some Planters Peanuts in my bag but I also remembered to look at the time and realized it was getting close to start time but Jane had not yet arrived. I looked down the alley again and saw that Jane was in the studio after all. I went and knocked louder a few times until she finally heard me and came to let me in.

The studio was starting to look a little barer, as the members have slowly started moving their stuff out, since they and a lot of the other commercial tenants will soon be evicted to make way for the big development project in 2017 that will require the demolition of that part of the old retail neighborhood. I have the honour of being the last model to pose at Studio 1181.

Since I’d stupidly forgotten my laptop and couldn’t work on my essay, I joined them all at the table for coffee during the break. When I told Jane that I was taking Canadian Poetry with George Elliot Clarke, she said, “Oh! What fun!” She told me that he’d been the master of ceremonies at the launch of a book about Marie Angelique, the slave that was hung for allegedly starting a fire that burned a chunk of Montreal. The book is called, “The Hanging of Angelique” by Afua Cooper. She said that she’d very much enjoyed George’s hosting of the event.

Relating to her interest in the story of Angelique, Jane told me that she’s a retired anthropologist and years ago spent some time in Mali, West Africa.

Helen heard me mention that I write poetry and so she asked me to email her some.

At the end of the session, the other Jane asked me if I would pose for a photo with her because I was a model that she’d enjoyed drawing over the last thirty years and she wanted something to remember me by. I put my arm around her and she put hers around me and we posed.

Even though I would be back in two days to pose for them one last time, some of them treated this time like it was the last time they’d see me. They are putting feelers out to look for another space so they can continue working together, but for convenience relative to where most of them live, they’d like a space that’s further uptown, like maybe Forest Hill.

I rushed home and got immediately to work on my paper. I worked for about six hours straight, overlapping well into class time. There was no time for any kind of second draft. I pulled together as best as I could the argument I wanted to make about Confessionalism in relation to a few poems by Albert Moritz, Roo Borson and Daphne Marlatt. As usual, a lot of ideas came to me as I was writing and so some of those dictated the direction of the essay. I figured out most of the meaning behind Borson’s often surrealist poem, “Sad Device” as a break up poem and I interpreted Marlatt’s “Listen” as a coming together poem. I also realized that Moritz’s “The Tidal Wave” was a deep image poem. At around 19:30 I started doing the citations and then printed the essay, stapled it and put it inside of a large, thin atlas that I often use for keeping essays from getting crumpled in transport. I put the atlas in a garbage bag because it was raining and I headed downtown for University College. I got to class with about 45 minutes left. George was showing movies as he does on essay hand-in nights. The movie that was playing when I came in was “Niagara Motel”, which was centred on the residents of a Motel in Niagara Falls. The caretaker of the place looked familiar but I didn’t find out till later that he was played by Craig Ferguson. It’s kind of a quirky, sad comedy about a couple of drug addicts that is trying go straight so they can get their daughter back from Social Services; a waitress whose husband was eaten by a bear and who is pregnant and considering making porn films to support the baby; a motel caretaker whose wife on their honeymoon when she fell overboard from the Maid of the Mist tour boat under Niagara Falls and an upper middle class couple that has fallen on bad times as the husband looks for a job and the wife realizes how dependent she had been on him financially as the money runs out. George had to cut the film short at the end of class time, but told us that we had to admit that the story was well written. He told me that it was penned by Toronto playwright, George F. Walker. There had only been two other students in the room when I arrived.

I handed in my essay and then wished George a “Merry Christmas” though I don’t really know whether he celebrates the Yule holiday. He said he would be leaving the next evening for an eight-day lecture and reading tour of Germany. As we left the building the bells in the Soldiers Tower were playing the Christmas melody Gloria in Excelsis Deo. As we parted, George called to me that he would read the poems I’d sent him before he sees me again.

Here’s why I’d sent George some of my poems. A week and a half before that I submitted five pages of poetry to apply for selection in the Jack MacMillan Writer in Residence workshop at Massey College with U of T’s new writer in residence, Sachiko Murakami. I don’t know if I’m even interested in workshopping my poetry, but the fact she is only selecting fifteen applicants made me want to see if I could get in. I’d sent my stuff in one day before the deadline, but when I got home after class on Tuesday, November 30 there was an email from the Smaro Kamboureli, the person that was taking the applications. Her message though was very strange, “I’ve just noticed that your submissions are prose. The seminar this year is on poetry alone. If you also write poetry, please submit a five-page sample right away.” I emailed her back with this message, “I do not understand your observation that my submissions are prose. They are all in verse. I am totally surprised by your response. I really don’t think I would be mistaken about what I sent you being poetry. I don’t know what to say other than to suggest that you have a poet look at what I sent you.” I had no idea whether my submission would be accepted at this point and so in a panic I sent the five pages of poetry to George, asking him if he could explain why someone might think that my poetry was prose. After that there was another email from Smaro telling me that she did not actually read my submission but had just determined at a glance that it was prose. She added though, “But there is no need to insult me. I’m an English professor, for god’s sake!” I had not meant to insult her, but what could I have concluded from someone saying that what I’d sent wasn’t poetry other than that the person making the judgment was not a poet? I emailed George back that the whole thing had been a false alarm but that since he now had some of my poetry he was welcome to read it and tell me what he thought. So that’s why the next week he told me he would read them over the break.

I rode home in the lighter than earlier rain, relieved that the term was now finally over and I’d have a month off.

            I watched an episode of Johnny Staccato in which he had to deal with an exact double of himself who happened to be a very nasty hit man from Canada.