On Tuesday morning when I got up I was still depressed about
how slow the progress has been on my bike building project. I hadn’t really put
a time frame on it when I started but on some level I think that I expected it
to have been finished by now. I was in a funk while doing my yoga and it hung
on during song practice until it got tired of me and gradually dropped away.
About half
an hour into the afternoon, Nick Cushing came in to town with some gifts, such
as a rim and a tire for my unfinished bicycle. He also brought me a box full o
various tools that consisted mostly of wrenches, ratchet wrenches and
attachments, Allen keys, plus a tying-down mechanism that consists of a sturdy
fabric tape and a ratchet that I think might be called a Smartstrap.
He stayed
and chatted for a while and accidentally broke the about to break leg from my
kitchen table. It had come undone from the top a few years ago and back then I
had to glue wood shavings into the screw holes so the screws would catch again.
It had been secure again for a few years but then started coming loose again. I
was able to prolong the inevitable by knowing not to treat it like it was
secure, but Nick didn’t know how weak it was. We turned the table around and
propped the side with the now missing leg against the radiator casing. He
offered to screw that corner of the table into the wood of the casing, but I
told him I’d try to fix it once my bike was built.
We argued
for a while about Donald Trump and Steve Banning. Nick doesn’t think they are
as bad as the media makes them out to be. While I think that Trump has a mental
illness that makes him dangerous as both a businessman and a politician and
Bannon is a guy that has compared women’s empowerment to cancer in addition to
turning Trump’s ear with several extremist conspiracy theories. Nick argues
that things would be far worse in the States is Mike Pence were in charge.
That’s possible but Pence is second in command because of Trump choosing him,
so he’s effectively just another result of Trump’s personality disorder.
Somehow I think Pence wouldn’t be as much of an asshole for his brief stint in
power if Trump were to be impeached. As an actual politician, unlike Trump, he
probably knows when to keep his mouth shut, even if he wants to say something
extreme about Gays and women.
On Tuesday
evening I headed out for my first time at the Shab-e She’r reading series since
before Christmas. I hadn’t been able to attend from September to November or
from January to March because my Tuesday nights had been tied up with the
Canadian Poetry course I’d been taking at U of T. On my way to the St Stephen
in the Fields Anglican Church I rode over webs of cracks in the concrete of
College Street that had been given as a gift from winter to spring and which
seemed to prove Leonard Cohen a liar, since I didn’t see any light getting
through.
When I
walked into the church, Bänoo
was standing by the greeting table behind which Giovanna Riccio and a new
volunteer named Sara were sitting. Bänoo gave me a hug and I commented that it was my annual hug.
Then Giovanna got up and embraced me as well. I said to her, “I hear you’re
going to Italy!” George Elliot Clarke had already told me that they would be
spending the entire month of June there but Giovanna elaborated on that to tell
me that she would be giving a talk at a university there and that George would
be working on his memoirs. I had been under the impression, based on what
George said, that they would be travelling all over the country, but she
informed me that they would be renting a place and not touring while they are
there in June but that George would be doing a lecture tour for one week in
May. I mentioned that I knew he would have to be in town on May 20th.
She asked if I meant for the Haiku Canada event at the University of Toronto in
Mississauga campus. I affirmed that a friend of mine had invited me there as
his guest. She inquired as to whether I would be reading any “haikus” there. I
answered that I hadn’t been told that there’d be an opportunity to read
anything but that I might bring something along just in case. She disclosed
that she’d be reading some “haikus” and at that point I decided to be a
know-it-all and gently instructed her that the plural of “haiku” is “haiku”.
She wondered how many other words don’t use an “s” to indicate their plurals. I
suggested that likely no Japanese words would use an “s” for multiples but
there was also “deer” and “moose”.
She asked
how I’d made out on the final assignment for George’s Canadian Poetry course. I
shared that I had chosen the poetry manuscript option over an essay, but had
been disappointed that I’d only received an A-minus. Giovanna consoled me with
something that George had declared to her while marking the papers. He rarely
gives out A-minuses and considers anything for which he gives an A-minus to be
publishable. That made me feel a lot better. I divulged that George made some
funny comments beside my poetry. Beside two poems he’d noted that they reminded
him of Al Purdy. I found that odd, since I haven’t been influenced by Purdy in
any way. I added though that the poems had been inspired by Susan Musgrave and
that both she and Purdy are autodidacts, like me. “And me!” Giovanna piped in.
We were interrupted by guests arriving, so I went to take a seat in the front
row.
A few
minutes later my old friend, Tom Smarda arrived. He didn’t want to sit where I
was sitting during the readings but he brought a chair over from the side and
sat in front of me to chat, promising Bänoo that he’d move the furniture back when the show started.
While he strummed his guitar, we talked about what I’d been up to in terms of
poetry and bike building and also about my upcoming gig on June 3rd,
to which Tom unfortunately can’t make it. Bänoo was sitting nearby in conversation with someone else,
and Tom informed her that he’d known me since 1979 in Vancouver. Bänoo exclaimed, “That’s a
lifetime!”
Sidney
White arrived, telling Tom about her upcoming conspiracy lecture at U of T on
the subject of “gender”. Then she mentioned the amount of Roundup that can be
found in women’s wombs. She didn’t elaborate but I assume that she agrees with
Alex Jones’s claim that atrazine causes changes in gender expression, although
the active ingredient in Roundup is glyphosate which does not have this effect.
Additionally this sex changing result has only been found in frogs, which
change their gender far more easily than humans. So atrazine overexposure may
only trigger changes in amphibians that could possibly happen anyway.
Sidney also
expressed doubt about global warming because she hasn’t seen evidence. The
thing is that the evidence of global warming is very hard to see where we live,
which is the temperate zone. The effects of global warming become very obvious
to people that live in the arctic. Sidney keeps on saying that she’s an
investigative journalist but it seems to me that she tends to settle on the
things that she wants to believe and doesn’t do any research beyond that point.
The event
started at about 17:20 with Bänoo’s
usual introduction that explained to newcomers the goal of Shab-e She’r. She
wants to bring groups of pots together that are separated by marks of identity.
She observed that if months were years Shab’e- She’r would be older than she is
now. She shared that a lot of the volunteers on her team have PhDs. She added
that since they were now in a church, if poets want to come and talk to “god”
this was the place to do it. She informed us that next month’s featured poets
would be Allan Briesmaster and Katherine Hernandez.
The first
readings, as usual were from the open mic and the first poet that Bänoo invited up was Ian French,
who said he would be reading “a poem about the important institution of
marriage … counselling” which is good “like having your appendix removed is
good … climbing Mount Everest blind folded and naked with a mini-bus strapped
to your back? Big deal! Try marriage … Should my next wife be a trophy … No,
because it was you who rolled the stone from my tomb … So I will go every week
to the relationship garage … Call it love …”
Bänoo announced that there is a Slovenian
event happening at the church on the following day (April 26th) with
Miljana Cunta and Gorazd Kocijancic with Giovanna Riccio and George Elliot
Clarke.
The next
open stage poet was Matthew Johnston, who stated that he was learning Hawaiian
and read a short poem that he’d written in English, then delivered it again in
Hawaiian and finally gave us back the English translation of the poem that had
been altered by its having been rendered into Hawaiian. From the original –
“Pre-dawn … the ripples in the sheets … mounded by sleep …” After translation
to Hawaiian and back again to English – “The indefinite period of early light
continued … that had lain flat into heaps of ripples … tell time like a fence …
to chronicle the passing of the seasons … to show the distance yawning between
two things.”
Next was
Sarah Crookall, the new volunteer – “My breath is drawn from me … Compared to
the softness of your lips … I love you and the future you but I am still in the
photograph of the past you … Your cadence chisels and pierces the expanse …”
Then came
Norman Allan with a poem called “When Lucky Met Chase” – “When my dog Lucky met
Chase they rolled in the hay … Falling in love, losing my heart … She was so
cute … If this is home, I’m healed … When Lucky met chase, they nuzzled …
Arriving at her door … I wondered what reality I would meet … Walking my dogs
through the quarry … Now I avoid the quarry … I’m angry of course … I thought
she was my Chase …”
Norman was
followed by Teresa Hall, who gets around with a cane, and so she walked to the
far end of the steps to get to the stage with the help of the railing. Her
first poem was called “This Land of Freedom: Canada” – “ … Here in this ancient
land of Inuit and native son … This land of human grace … northern lights, musk
ox and polar bear … This land of quiet strength will break away those chains …”
Teresa’s
second poem was “Clayoquot Sound” – “There was a place where I could go where
forests grow … A place once wild … But oh when I returned not a single tree
remained …”
Her final
offering was “Victory” – “Where a village stood once … Where a woman had fled
with her newborn babe, now a tomb …”
This was
the end of the first half of the open mic and because Bänoo was fighting a cold she
passed the hosting of the features over to Kate Marshall Flaherty. The first
announcement that Kate made was that Bänoo Zan has been short-listed for the Gerald Lampert
memorial Award for her book, “Songs of Exile”.
Kate then
introduced our first feature, Diana Manole. Diana, whose first language is
Rumanian, chose not to use the microphone and began by disclosing that since
2013 she has been both dreaming and writing in English. She also reported that
Shab-e She’r is very special to her because it was the first reading series
where she had ever read her poetry.
Diana had
earlier handed out copies of a survey that she is taking about first and second
language speaking, but I wasn’t interested at that time in filling it out.
She began
her set with readings from her book, “Black and White”, which she wrote in
Rumanian and then translated but she predicted that it might be the last book
that she will write first in Rumanian.
I looked to
my left and noticed that Norman Allen was doing a coloured sketch of Diana as
she read.
From Diana’s
first poem – “ … Immigrating made me a hyphenated person … I became remaining …
I became Canadian when the US took my fingerprints … I became white when you
put your black hand on mine …”
From “Lady
in Waiting” – “The sweat on our foreheads turned into communion wine … nailed
us to the wooden floorboards … When I wipe your forehead my tenderness takes
you by surprise … The sugar from plantations we will never see dissolves in our
blood … Transforms the uterus into a prison … Your hand slides down my thighs,
longing for a cross to crucify me …”
From
“Making Love in the Name of the Past” – “ … Like a bird blinded by city lights
… Dreaming of the sound of words … A blind man imagining the colours of the
rainbow … I’ll show you what it means to be merchandise … Your skin whiter than
mine.”
Of her next
poem, Diana revealed that it’s one that she particularly likes to read and she
dedicated it to all the poets of all accents and skin colours – “Friends from
all over the world question my right to tell stories of another race … You
carve words directly on your skin like a monk … Changing you from victim to
self executioner … The lusty smell of African flowers … An intercourse that
lacks the least tenderness … Your eyes full of wonder like a first grader … When
the angel comes his colour doesn’t matter.
At this
point Diana switched from her published book to her manuscript and she stepped
closer to the edge of the stage.
From “Kiss”
– “January 26, 2013. You kiss me on a frigid Saturday night, arms covered in tattoos
and hearts covered in scars … You kiss me, never mind the cleaning lady … You
kiss me while security guards with Masters and PhDs cannot help taking us as
adulterers … Children without sin ready to have their first religious
experience … You envelope me in royal blue … As frail as the last breath of a
virgin saint … You hug me with glass arms … until my marrow starts shivering …
The desire to have sex becomes the desire to be.”
From her
next poem –“I recycle poems … I stopped handwriting my love in 1996 … I recycle
fleeting images from textbook sonnets … the milk in my breasts … a
Rumanian-English dictionary …”
Of her
following piece, Diana communicated that it was about Canada, which for her is
a land of contrasts. She divulged that one of the lines was inspired by Bänoo. From “Canada 150, Six Words
at a Time” – “ … Toronto a peaceful Babylon of accents … Magna cum laude …
Visible minority … Single mom … Shared addictions … Ethnic cooking … take out
dinners…”
Diana’s
last offering was entitled “A Book” – “You fill me with words and give me a
book when any other man would give me a child … Still fighting for people’s
right to be vulnerable … An invasion of maggots eating up the rancid past …
Squinting at my computer screen … Late penalties … you call … you are a very
powerful woman … stumbling through the strange words of O Canada.”
Diana
Manole’s poetry is often thoughtful and erotic, with a stream of consciousness
flow and some strong imagery. Interestingly, the work that was written in
Rumanian and translated into English has a more poetic feel than that from the
manuscript that she composed entirely in English.
Kate
returned to the stage to introduce Léonicka Valcias, who would be telling us of
an upcoming event, but a lot of people, including Diana Manole, were talking
during the intro as if we were on a break.
Here is
some of what Léonicka imparted to us – “When I come to events like this I know
you are supporting each other … I know it’s important to give writers
opportunities … Self-publishing is great but not if it’s your only option … Who
is left out of the picture? People of colour, queer people, immigrants … She
told us about the FOLD (Festival of Literary Diversity) which would be taking
place from May 4 to May 7. We want to make sure young people are involved as
well … spoken word … We have a poet’s gallery … We are inviting several poets …
Each stop will be a poet … Saturday at 8:30 …” Then she announced that the
event was in Brampton and she could tell that it was a bit of a let down. She
insisted though “It’s not far. It’s downtown
… Writers hub, publishers, magazine editors …”
Kate
proclaimed a short break and I headed for the washroom. The first one was
occupied with someone else already second in line, but I knew there was another
washroom adjacent to the gym, which was just through another door. It turned
out there were two washrooms, but I couldn’t find a light switch for the one
that was not being used. Maggie Helwig, the St Stephen’s minister was having a
meeting in the gym and she came to flick the switch for me, which turned out to
be across the hall from the washroom door.
I came back
to the main room, but Tom was engaged in another conversation with Sidney. I
don’t know if he buys all of her conspiracy “research” but I know that he
doesn’t trust either the government or corporations so I guess maybe he
wouldn’t put it past them to cover stuff up.
I went and
chatted with Cy Strom about a song that I asked him to translate for me and
about the top front denture that I have to wear these days to keep from looking
like a hockey player and to keep from slushing my “F”s when I sing or speak.
After the
break, Norman set a very fragrant cup of mint tea on the seat between us.
Kate
introduced Anuj Rastogi, who was dressed entirely in dark clothing except for a
pair of neon purple sneakers that didn’t seem very sneaky. Anouj had
impressively memorized his entire set and said that he would start off with a
cosmic theme because we were in a church.
His first
piece had the title of “Breaking News” – “As the petals of a flower wither by
the hour … with nothing more than a deep connection to be made … a man’s ego
becomes deceased and he cooks his wife’s meal … Lead yourself on a journey for
all others to follow … Through the wonder of my soul’s destination … You see,
my quest for salvation has been interrupted … For every finger that points,
three others point back …”
Before
reading his second poem, Anuj commented about what an honour it was to share a
stage with Ian French, whom he referred to as “uber poetic royalty”.
Anuj shared
that he is not particularly religious but he thinks there is a universal force.
His next poem was written from the point of view of that force – “If I had my
way I would hold you back before you smother every inch of your lands … I would
not just stand idly by … I would snag the coat of every man who is about to
walk out on his family … I would fly airplanes with skywriting and banners … I
would hit reboot … I’m not even sure I exist.”
It was
fairly clear from his first two pieces that Anuj is a slam poet, but his
encouragement of people to snap their fingers during the recitations if they
liked something he said, edged him more solidly into that culture.
Anuj
recounted how he went to Washington a while ago and visited the Lincoln
Memorial. He realized while he was there that he was standing in the same spot
from which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. It
inspired him to write a piece that also began with “I have a dream” and continued
with “that one day we will celebrate the … hues … We will embrace all those
around …no one separate …”
His next
piece was written for his son – “My boy, while you were sleeping the world
changed … like a trip cut short by a flat tire … fortune made other plans … A
drop of water, a hint of sand … We are beings of one flesh … That old world, I
have just burned …”
Anuj
explained, “Most of these poems are a lot longer, so these are all excerpts.”
Of his next
poem he asserted, “In an alternate universe it came down to one moment”.
From “I
Wish I Had” – “Looking back, I once said I had no regrets. I stood at a fork on
life’s path and went right … paralysed in fear and wrapped in a straightjacket
of words … I was a master musician … Like an hourglass of promise turned on its
side … Armed with nothing but a boarding pass and the baggage of my shattered
dreams … This is the poem that I could have written … I don not regret, for on
that day I did say Hi.”
From “Part
2” – “Hi. One little word, two simple letters … In that moment … I saw the most
haunting smile … You look at me with a gentle shake of your head … Time is a
cycle, not a line … Only to realize he, until this very moment, had only ever
been alone … I shivered nervously and whispered ‘Hi’… The wave that is you
ravaged the shores …”
Anuj
declared, “Every person here is a creative being!”
From “The
Seed” – “It germinates from a moment of synapse … a new potentiality that is
about to become a reality manifests … To learn to grow that idea that you have
been ignoring is your seed …”
Anuj
related that he’d once had a teacher who thought he’d amount to nothing and his
next poem reflected on that – “My tenth grade English teacher said I should
never start a sentence with the word ‘because’ … Because sometimes you need to
get your point across …”
For his
final offering, Anuj invited violist DOORJA to the stage to accompany him. He
began with an atmospheric introduction while using the bow and then he picked
out a rhythm to which Anuj recited his poem, “Baby Girl” – “Baby girl, let me
tell you, when you first entered this world … as I cut that cord … the first
blade releasing a flood of emotion … Why should I feel compelled to write you a
second poem … You will be both glue and surface … because the damsel in this
dress is not a damsel in distress … Through the prison of your intellect … you
will … set many new precedents … Be married to your dream … One day my dust
will float off into the air … You will be you … You are the seed … Now please
go and clean up your room.”
Anuj said
in closing, of Shab-e She’r, “If there was more of this in the world there
would not be as many missiles!”
Anuj
Rastogi’s writing is extremely positive, somewhat reflective and occasionally
creative. In many ways it is like a hybrid of spoken word style with that of
the sentimental poeticization of clichés that is the fodder of Country and
Western lyrics only with a backdrop of new age themes replacing pickup trucks,
beer and fenceposts. On a couple of occasions he used decades old clichés, such
as the idea of pointing a finger and having three fingers pointing back at you,
and presented them as if he had originated them himself. He really should have
at least introduced these phrases with something like, “As they say …”.
I think that
it would have been better to have started with Anuj and for Diana to have been
the final feature. That way the energy of creativity would have been a bit
higher to usher in the second half of the open stage.
As usual,
we moved directly from the final feature back to the open stage, and there was
a changing of the hosts as Bänoo
returned to the stage.
The first
open miker in the second half turned out to be me.
I read from
a very short story – “I like to masturbate in my car at morning rush hour
with my hand on the head of my dick like a nervous butler polishing a brass
doorknob at ten minutes to high tea when the Queen has been announced as a last
minute guest. I never get pissed off in traffic jams because I always have
something to do and far from it being anti-social I always include the drivers
next to me in my fantasies on my way to work …”
Next came Yesid Ortega with two
poems. The first was called “Drop It” – “Come on man! Why did you do this?
Coffee all over me … I said drop it now … I love you …”
His second poem was “Almost Became”
– “I’m sorry for taking your spot … Now I am the one that needs to focus … I
just realized how beautiful your eyes are.”
Then we heard from Simon, who read
three poems.
From “Almighty” – “You’re a page
filled with ancient talk … You’re a temple wall … an empty rock … You’re a
divine hack … You should be better.”
From “Pentimento” – “I’ve been
thinking what it is not to love … Not to love the grey, deserted road … Not to
love what might never come to be …”
From “Travelling Poem” – “In the
shadow of a sierra Nevada … in the din of an Indian traffic snarl … One night I
woke at 3:00 AM … Love is a long conversation among our various selves … One of
the things that scared me to death was how old Jane was … I wished she’d
changed her hairstyle … It may not have simply been a moment … It may have been
the apogee.”
Simon was followed by Sidney White,
who read, “The Truth is No Defence” – “The claws of a moneylender rake the
Earth … The whirring hiss of financial Iagos … No messenger who is not killed …
There was a teacher who lashed out at this slavery … He died on a cross … He
was a Palestinian.”
I’ll have to disagree with Sidney on
that final claim that Jesus was a Palestinian. That would be like saying that
King Kamehameha the Great of Hawaii was an American because those Polynesian
islands later became a territory of the United States. While a large swath of
the Middle East was referred to as Palestine centuries before the alleged birth
of Christ. Technically, Jesus, if he existed would have officially been a Roman
subject but at the time of his birth the Roman Empire had not yet established
the Roman province of Palestine. Jesus may have never in his life even heard
the word “Palestine” and if he felt the need to identify himself with a region
he probably would have referred to himself as Judean.
The open stage continued with Dona
Robati, who chose to sit on the steps that lead to the stage and eschewed the
microphone. He clued us in on his expertise at smelling bad attitude and
remarked that such an odour was nowhere to be smelled there on this night. He
shared with us the first three poems that he had ever written in English.
From the first – “Till quarter to
autumn was the leaf green …My picture was upside down in your teardrop.”
From the second – “Presence makes me
full of silence … When presence is absent I make silence full of me.”
From the third – “I broke myself.
You got broken.”
After Dona was Justin Lauzon, who
read half of a poem that he said would be too long for the open stage in its
entirety. From “The Bloom” – “She was slim … nude … the surf spouted
confessional … I was a thief of moments … I learned low calorie vocabulary … My
tawdry tongue … There was breath spilling frenzy … in the wretched music of her
hips … he purchased his end … and licked a little at the places she pointed to
…” That was the end of the first half of his poem.
Thereon it was Chai’s turn and
because he has a tendency to always do two poems, Bänoo stressed to him as they met
on the stairs, “One poem!”
Chai
reminded us that three days before it had been Earth Day. Then, oblivious to Bänoo’s request, he informed us
that he would be reading two poems.
From the
first – “To be or not to be was a princely question. Waiting for an answer, I
cared a hoot … To be is not to eat … To be or not to be is now a planetary
question … Bees are dying off … Pesticides … Ever tasted their sweet,
nourishing honey … I urge you all to join in that question.”
He was
about to start his second poem when Kate came towards him and calling his name,
began to verbally put the kibosh on his second poem, when he defended that it
would only be a “small haiku”, so she nodded and moved back.
Chai’s
“haiku” – “The lord created this planet 70% for the fish, but two monkeys
hijacked it”.
On the
heels of Chai came Mizan, who read a poem that I’d heard from him at least once
before – “World ruled by so many systems … Human dignity is under threat …
Outcome remains the same …”
Ensuingly
we heard from Norman Perrin, who recited a story that he said he’d overheard in
the sandpit of the Spiral Garden. I had to look this up, but I assume that the
garden he referred to is at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital.
From the
story – “There were three brothers who came to the rabbi … To each one he gave
seeds … The first two did very well … The third grew only weeds … When it came
time to go to market the third decided that since he had nothing then he would
sell nothing … He called out ‘Nothing for sale!’ … Through the marketplace came
a very wealthy man … The doctors had told him that his daughter was dying …
Suddenly he heard the failed farmer calling out ‘Nothing for sale!’ … He smiled
and pulled out a bag of gold, which he tossed to the man, declaring, ‘I’ll buy
your nothing!’ … When he went back to his house, his servants told him that his
daughter had miraculously become well.”
The
penultimate poet of the night was Alexandra and as she approached the stage, Bänoo announced that after her,
last but not least we would hear from Tom. Tom though didn’t hear the first
part and thought that he’d just been introduced and he ascended the stage with
his guitar. When he realized his mistake he returned to his seat, having been
around long enough to not be very embarrassed by small errors.
Alexandra
read “In Parallel” – “ … parallel the prevailing winds … our spirit animals …
there are no parabolic crossings in our stars … invisible to the far away
winces and lovers for the bones of winter to remember.”
Finally it was
Tom’s turn. From his song – “Shut up and do as you are told or get out … Of
course I can see that you wanna be boss in your own house … You will no longer
have a home … You’re not willing to compromise and I don’t blame you … I’m
afraid that you will encroach upon my space … When discussion is impossible, I
can’t live like that …”
When Shab-e
She’r was over, I stood up and when Ian French was walking by he shook my hand
and told me, “Great stuff!” I told him that I’d enjoyed his piece as well. Then
Matthew approached to say that the poem I’d done was lots of fun. Of his poems
I offered the view that it was interesting to hear things translated into other
languages and then translated back, and that I’d thought about doing that with
French translations. He informed me that the Hawaiian language is interesting
because it does not have the sound “ka”. This puzzled and so I asked him to
explain King Kamehameha then. He just smiled and said that was a whole other
thing.
I chatted
with Cy again and he told me that he’d enjoyed my story. He said that he’d
found Diana to be quite humorous and then we discussed whether it was a
Rumanian thing. I think we agreed that might not the case since we’d both had
exes that were from Rumania and they weren’t particularly funny people.
We
discussed the non-secular venue again, since I hadn’t been to Shab-e She’r
since the very first night it had been in the church, I wondered if Cy had
noticed a change in audience. He said that St Stephen in the Fields seems to
attract a slightly different crowd but that in terms of volume, the audience
hasn’t changed.
Still on
the subject of religion, we talked about cults, and Cy asked if I remembered
the The Process. I did remember them from when I was seventeen and a street
person in Toronto. Cy thought they had a very cool way of dressing. I recalled
that their doctrine was based on some kind of pact between Jesus and Satan.
Scientology also came up, but I don’t think either of us knew that the Process
had come about as a splinter from L. Ron Hubbard’s church. I shared how when I
was on the street there were lots of these cults such as Scientology, the
Process, the Unification Church and the Hare Krsnas that would invite street
people over for food and indoctrination. I offered the view that the Moonies
had the worst snacks of all and that the Hare Krsna’s not only had the best
munchies but also the best films and music.
I noted
aloud that when I was there in the church the last time, it was the St
Stephen’s minister, Maggie Helwig that I’d seen walking around quickly closing
doors and shutting off the light switches, but this time it was Bänoo who was performing those
duties. Cy joked that Bänoo
had left her clerical collar at home this time.
I left with Cy, Bänoo, Sarah and Norman and walked with them the short
distance to my bike before saying goodnight.
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