Sandals in the Snow

            The tap water still tasted like iodine on the Saturday morning of December 23^rd but I drank it anyway during song practice, forcing down big gulps to get it over with.

            I dreaded going to the food bank that day because of the horrible, cold wait last time. When I arrived there were two cop cars parked in front. I established my place in line with an orange Australian Boot Company bag and headed for the door to go downstairs but it was locked. I asked why the cops were there and the big guy with the baseball cap and the moustache said that the new manager (the one who’d been swearing at people in line last time) had called the police on an old woman that had gone downstairs to pee.  A couple of minutes later the two ossifers came up with the elderly Jamaican woman who usually gets in line at about 7:00. She was told she couldn’t go back down because it’s private property and they had a right to not want her there. The old lady told us that all she’d done was gone down to pee but the manager pushed her body and her face. I suggested that she charge her and everybody else agreed. One of the lowpeace officers, who looked something like Anderson Cooper, as he was getting into his car, declared, “Nobody’s charging anyone with assault!” I wondered why the cop said she couldn’t charge someone with assault that had pushed her. The e-cigarette guy answered, “Because he’s an asshole!” and then advised her to call another cop and to press charges. Downstairs they’d put a few food items in a box for the old lady. It was now lying on the floor of the entryway. When she was asked if she wanted it she exclaimed in her Jamaican accent, “They can stick it up where the sun don’t shine!”

            After the fuzz left I went downstairs. When I walked into the food bank the manager called out to me, “We’re not open yet, sweetie!” I said, “I know. I’m here to make a donation.” The manager seemed to appreciate a donation of cat food and said, “Not enough people think about the cats!” I explained that mine had died of old age. She said she was sorry but I said I wasn’t and declared that 17 years is long enough to have cats (though that was just one generation. I’d actually had that family of felines for 20 years). I told her that I write a column on the food bank experience and I wanted to interview someone in management. She said I could interview her and take a tour of the facilities after the holidays. She gave me her name, Valdene, and the number for the food bank.

            It was snowing in a steady, sleepy and somewhat lovely fall. Bart was not in line, but rather standing against the wall between the food bank door and the entrance to the Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre. As usual, he was calling out absurd and often obscene statements, as his condition compels him to do. A tough looking, skinny young man came walking awkwardly through the snow, wearing sandals over bare feet. As he passed Bart he heard him say something and thought he was speaking to him. He stopped and confronted Bart, telling him that he should show more respect. Bart told him, “You don’t understand” and revealed himself to be quite aware of his own affliction as he tried to explain to the guy that he hadn’t been talking to him or to anyone, but the guy just gave Bart an angry warning to watch his mouth and then continued on. A half an hour or so later he came back and chased Bart out into the street, even though Bart is much taller than him, then he shouted more threats and went back the way he’d come, almost barefoot in the winter weather.

            Wayne was in line, even more exuberant, animated and behaviourally over the top than usual while he danced and shouted ridiculous things. I assume that in terms of uncontrolled speech, Bart and Wayne share a similar disorder, but it’s interesting what different characteristics their language and expression have. Bart is much more dramatic and often takes on different voices, while Wayne’s verbal ejaculations are often clearly intended to be funny. Wayne started singing a Christmas carol and approached me, asking if I anted him to stop. I assured him that he could keep on singing. He responded, “No, I want you to pay me to stop!” I informed him that he would have to pay me to pay him to stop singing. “A man of intelligence!” he declared and moved on to another routine.

            Someone in line compared Wayne to Gene Gene the Dancing Machine on the Gong Show.

            I looked away from Wayne for a couple of minutes and when I turned back he was dancing around with his pants off as the snow fell on his naked legs. It looked like he had a pair of shorts on underneath, but nonetheless it was a pretty surprising display. It seemed his intention was to put on a show for passing traffic as he walked to the edge of the sidewalk and did a mock stripper dance. Shortly after that he hurriedly put his pants back on but fifteen minutes later he took his coat off and pulled the legs of his pants up until his legs were just as exposed as before and began another raunchy gavotte. He did this for several minutes, then he pulled his pant legs down and pulled up the waistband to his stomach till he looked like a tubby version of Steve Erkel and commenced prancing around like that, and to make it even more comical, he was wearing a trilby hat backwards that sat high on his head because it was too small. Then, with each hand he pinched two side-by-side points on his sweatshirt and pulled the fabric out as far as he could to imitate breasts and continued to dance that way for a while.

            The people ahead of me were a middle-aged couple from Poland, though I assume they met here in Canada. They chatted in Polish the whole time, except when she was affectionately leaning her head on his shoulder. It seemed to me that they got along so well that they couldn’t possibly be married.

            The line started moving at around 11:00 but it was closer to 11:30 by the time I got downstairs. I noticed that the windows had already been repaired since the angry guy broke them last week.

            Sue was back handling the meat and dairy. She left the food bank almost two years ago but she always returns to help out at Christmas time. I complimented the new colour of her braids. She thanked me and joked that she was feeling blue.

There was the usual choice between frozen hot dogs and the frozen ground chicken that I selected. She gave me a two half litres of milk; six eggs (at least one of which broke before I got home); a frozen, cooked ham, two 225 gram tubs of pro active margarine, a pack of Pillsbury raspberry turnovers. We wished each other a merry Christmas and I moved on to Sylvia’s vegetable section.

Sylvia gave me two small bunches of organic collard greens; a bag of three organic romaine hearts; three small zucchini; ten potatoes and five small bosc pears. She offered me some Granny Smith apples and a bag of onions but I still had a bag of each from last time. After I wished her a merry Christmas and turned towards the shelves, I was standing and waiting for a volunteer when Sylvia offered me a turnip. A woman nearby corrected her that it was a rutabaga. I was sceptical, but I looked it up later and found that she was right. The fact that it was waxed apparently is a dead giveaway. Rutabagas are said to have come about when a turnip got crossed with a cabbage. The first official record of the rutabaga is by a Swiss Botanist from 400 years ago. I turned Sylvia’s rutabaga down because I was just finishing up the one that I’d gotten last time and there is only so much of that strong, sharp rooty flavour that I can take. Just then someone gave Sylvia some tomatoes so I asked her for one and she gave me two.

I was glad that my helper for the shelves was the tiny, elderly Filipino woman. She is always so nice that it’s hard not to smile at her. She asked if I was being served. I declared, “You’re serving me!” and she confirmed with a smile, “I’m serving you!”

There was a wide variety of cereals on offer, but I picked one that had lost its box and had a transparent bag showing that it had flakes, raisins, dried cranberries and chopped almonds.

I took a tomato and basil sauce from the pasta section.

At the top of the soup shelf I found a carton of organic free range chicken broth. How could it possibly be “free range” if it’s stuck in the same size container as all the regular chicken broth? Shouldn’t it be allowed to flow freely along the floor of the food bank?

Below the broth were some canned soups. I chose an organic lentil soup but my helper acted sheepishly co-conspiratorial because I think she had been indicating ineffectively that I’d been supposed to take from the soups to the left of where her hand had been. She seemed to be telling me afterwards to put it quickly and deeply in my bag. One would almost think a SWAT team was going to burst in at any minute and take me out because I took organic lentil instead of Campbell’s tomato.

The canned protein/peanut butter shelf had a wide variety of canned meat and fish, I assume because that’s the kind of thing that people donate during the Christmas season at the supermarkets in the big barrels near the exits. I selected a can of tuna that turned out to be yellowfin in broth and oil.

From the bean shelf I got my usual can of chickpeas and among the canned vegetables I found a tin of crushed pineapple.

Below those were a choice between cartons of vegetable milks and organic orange juice. I picked the juice and she gave me two.

The cracker shelf had only sleeves of saltines and boxes of rice crackers. I grabbed the box.

Since she could reach them so easily, my helper was good at giving me stuff from bottom shelves. She scooped up for me a handful of small bags of gummy fruit candies, a couple of little packages of breadsticks with cheese dip and three dark chocolate and cherry trail mix bars.

The top of the last shelf always has a variety of snack items. I took the jar of salsa con queso.

I often skip the bread, but since I had a turkey to stuff in a couple of days I grabbed a couple of loaves of cranberry raisin flax bread that in terms of freshness were both way past sliceability. I also took a bag of pre-sliced organic spelt thin sandwich buns, the kind with multiple dock holes, because they would go well with some ground beef that I planned to make into burgers.

Because of the Christmas season the food bank has had much more plentiful offerings for the last couple of weeks than usual. There have been a greater variety of vegetables as well, though the quality has been low. The collard greens were pretty wilted, the zucchini turned out to be partly squishy, the tomatoes had to go straight to the garbage and I was worried about the romaine hearts because of recent news reports advising nobody in Ontario to eat romaine right now because of the risk of e coli. They look pretty fresh but I think I’m going to toss them just to be safe.

After leaving the food bank I immediately rode through the snow to the No Frills at King and Jameson. My main reason for going there was to buy bacon but I needed some fruit as well. The grapes weren’t looking so hot so I got a bag of oranges and a couple of packets of raspberries, as well as the bacon and a few other things.

After bringing my groceries home I went back out to the liquor store to get some beer. I planned to drink a little more than usual so I decided on a small case of 8 Creemore, which might last me till New Years. 

Rocketted as a Baby from the Exploding Planet Brooklyn ...

            On the Friday morning of December 22nd there was a mild snowstorm happening when I got up and it had been blowing all night. A guy in an electric wheelchair was whipping along the sidewalk across the street and he shouted “Yeehah!”

            The storm must have done something to the water purification plant. The water from my tap that morning had the same chemical taste that it had for a few days back in the summer.

I finally got around to tidying up in the kitchen and opened a letter from Social Services that had been sitting on my table since at least the beginning of the week. It turned out to be a notice that my assistance would be cut off because they didn’t receive my income statement. The letter was dated December 14^th but usually we’re supposed to send in our statement on the 15^th of every month. I’d mailed my statement on Saturday the 16^th but I guess they process the cheques early in December and since I was late for that their computer automatically sent out a notice. I was guessing that they’d probably received my income report since then but I called my worker to make sure. She wasn’t answering so I left a message.

            I was thinking that there might be a before Christmas sale at the Salvation Army thrift store, since when they have sales they are usually on Fridays. I rode through the slush to the Sally Ann but the sign on the window said that they only had a sale on Christmas items and that their clothing sale would be on Boxing Day.

            I took a siesta in the early afternoon and went to sleep right away but ten minutes later I got a return call from my worker. She told me she hadn’t received my income report but if I could tell her my income she’d process the info and release a cheque for me. I tried to go to the OCADU website but my network connection was not good at that time. She said I could leave the information on her voice mail. About fifteen minutes later I finally had written down my pay statements and right then I got a call from Janet, telling me that she’d just gotten my income statement. That was a relief!

            I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t, so after less than half an hour of trying I got up and did some writing. In the early evening I started feeling tired and so I went down for proper nap.

            The origin of Superman: Mild mannered baby, Clark Kent, after being carried from the exploding planet Brooklyn by a pregnant Radio City Rockette was bitten at the moment of birth by a radioactive building superintendent. Born with janitorial and maintenance skills far behind those of a normal human being, he’s part super and part man.  He’s Superman!

             

Guardians of the Galaxy

            It took a while getting to sleep on Thursday the morning of December 21st, after I went to bed at 1:30. Sometimes when I’m awake but lying down I have quick audio dreams. This time I heard a voice that sounded like a male radio announcer say, “Between the pants and the paper, he says we were just waiting for the uprising.”

            I woke up feeling incredibly dry, I think because of having eaten salty ham so soon before going to bed. During song practice I usually drink two tall glasses of water, but this morning I gulped it faster and drank more.

            I didn’t get a lot done during the day because of goofing around on the internet. I’ve barely started my review of last Tuesday’s Shab-e She’r poetry reading.

            In the evening I rode down to Freshco to pick up a few things. I had finally run out of tea and so I splurged on some Earl Grey. I bought some ground beef to eat on the weekend and a small strip loin beef roast that was good until January 9 in anticipation of getting tired of turkey after Christmas. Butter was on sale and I got some, though I haven’t bought it for a long time, because soft margarine is so much more convenient. I also picked up a couple of bags of cranberries and some brown sugar, as well as a few other of my regular purchases.

            That night I watched the sequel to The Guardians of the Galaxy. It was quite entertaining in its action combined with humour. I had the very first Guardians of the Galaxy comic when I was a kid but the only character from that time that was in this movie was Yondu, the guy who can control his deadly arrow by whistling. I also had the first Starlord comic, which was actually a larger format comic magazine. He had powers as I recall. Gamora was a companion of Adam Warlock; and Drax the Destroyer was sort of a good bad guy but not an alien. He was a transformed Earthman. Rocket Raccoon as I recall had his own comic and his stories weren’t set in the regular Marvel Universe. Ego the living planet was a nemesis of both Thor and the Fantastic Four. I think Mantis was also from Adam Warlock. I have several Adam Warlock comics and when I was a kid I had the Fantastic Four comic in which Adam was genetically created by renegade scientists on Earth. The final scene of the movie shows the yet to open pod from which Warlock was born, so he’ll obviously be in the next movie.

Seagull Folding Guitar Stand

            On Wednesday, December 20th in the late morning I headed downtown to run some pre-Christmas errands and do some shopping. Riding up Brock, under the railroad bridge was a dead brown and white rabbit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen rabbit road kill in Toronto even though there are plenty of rabbits (I read tens of thousands).

            The first thing I wanted to do was stop at She Said Boom on College to see if they had a copy of George Elliot Clarke’s Canticles Volume One part two. It’s mostly a record store but they have a pretty good selection of second hand books as well. They had a couple of George’s books but not the one I was looking for, so I made my way up to Bathurst and Bloor and then east to BMV Books. The also had some GEC books but not Canticles. Before unlocking my bike I decided to look for a washroom. The most convenient place I could think of was the Tranzac Club because the toilets were on the main floor. On the way there I was surprised to discover that Ye Olde Brunswick House is gone and that now there is a Rexall Drug Store in its place and all that’s left to indicate that the Brunswick had ever been there is a plaque. The Tranzac was closed so I used the washroom at the Future Bakery.

            I continued east to the Remenyi House of Music where I looked for bass strings for my daughter. There was one kind called “flat strings” that were smooth instead of wound but a lot more expensive. The salesperson asked what kind of music Astrid plays and I said that I think it’s a type of Punk. He said the smooth strings are more for soft rock like The Beatles and advised me that the cheaper ones are more conducive to a Punk sound. I bought a kind that was slightly more expensive than the cheapest and that are supposed to be easier on the fingers.

            I asked about rechargeable clip-on guitar tuners but he said he’s never heard of them. He said the ones they have will last a year but I didn’t believe him, since they were very much like mine, for which batteries last about two months.

            I was interested in a guitar stand. There were several cheap ones that I wouldn’t be able to carry in my backpack but they had one that folded up to fit into a container the size of a box of tissue and was made of African Sapele hardwood. It’s called a Seagull and I bought it for $50. 

            When I later took it out of the box it was in a nice little black velvet tie-bag that smelled of musk, but apparently that’s the smell of the sapele wood itself. 

            The stand will hold anything from a ukulele to a cello. 

            Still looking for George’s book I went to Indigo at Bay and Bloor. I walked around for a while before finally asking for directions to the poetry. The employee told me where it was but he didn’t tell me that there is no section labelled “poetry” there anymore. It took me ten minutes of wandering around the area that he’d indicated before I discovered that poetry was included in the “Arts and Letters” section. Once again, I found some George Elliot Clarke works, but not Canticles.

            I went out into the mall of the Manulife Centre to find a washroom but had to search around two levels. I remember when mall-like places always had signs with arrows pointing to their facilities. Even the directory did not indicate the toilets. I was just about to approach the security desk to inquire when I saw the washroom sign behind them in the adjacent hall that led to a downward stairway.

            I drove down Bay Street to College and west to King’s College Circle and then up to University College because I wanted to pick up my English test. They were supposed to have been returned to us on the last day of class but since the instructor was sick he’d emailed us about retrieving them at UC. The problem was I’d forgotten the course code and hadn’t thought to bring it with me. I told the woman in the office that the number ENG205 was in my head but when she couldn’t find that I remembered that it was a third year course. Finally she found my test and I thanked her for her trouble.

            I looked inside the booklet hopefully but was disappointed to see that I’d gotten 74%, which just a B. Hopefully I’ll do better on the term paper. I don’t like getting Bs. Bs are BS.

            My next stop was the U of T Bookstore where I easily found part one of George’s Canticles but part two didn’t seem to be around. I asked at the help desk but I’d thought that I was looking for volume two and the guy told me he didn’t think it existed. I went back to the shelves and looked some more, and then looked inside the book I’d found to realize that it was part two and not volume two I wanted. The staffer looked it up and then took me to a shelf I hadn’t checked and the book was there, so I bought it.

            After another search for a washroom I made my way for St Lawrence Market. The Sausage King still has the spicy pepperoni sticks but they don’t sell them individually anymore. I bought a bag of ten for $5 and then walked over to Placewares, but stopped to buy some four-year-old cheese on the way. Placewares have a wide variety of kitchen items but nothing that jumped out at me as a proper gift for Astrid. Her and Lauren have had their apartment for long enough that there was too much of a risk that anything I bought for their kitchen might already be something they have. I looked at the various shapes of cookie cutters and noticed one shape that was absent that I think would sell: cutters for bat shaped cookies.

            I went downstairs and found a bakery with some interesting, colourful and very expensive French macaroons. It cost over $2.50 for a little thing the size of an Oreo so I only bought two. I then walked over to the bulk store where I bought a variety of candy.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where, as I was locking my bike I saw the Sobeys truck pull in. On the sides of their trailers they have recipe suggestions and this one said, “Dribble raspberries with a splash of balsamic vinegar”. Aren’t a dribble and a splash two different things?

I bought a small bottle of maple syrup to send to Astrid. I also got an apple pie and took advantage of the sale on coffee, even though I still had half a large tin. I picked up some fruit, bread and yogourt and then headed home. As soon as I’d put my groceries away I rushed out to the post office to buy a small shipping box and found out that if I could get back there in half an hour I could mail my daughter’s package by express and still have it get to her by Christmas. I hurried home and packed as fast as I could. I think some truffles and the French macaroons might have gotten crushed a bit. I dashed back with my parcel but there was a line-up. The clerk told me I was too late but then he looked at Astrid’s postal code and then said that it was a part of Montreal that express should reach before Christmas.

I went home relieved but exhausted. I decided to take a one and a half hour siesta but I put the ham that I’d gotten from the food bank in the oven first. The problem was though that I woke up four hours later. The ham was not ruined. The skin was tough but the meat was still tasty underneath. The main inconvenience was that I had to eat so late. There was no point going to bed at midnight so I waited till about 1:30.

George Elliot Clarke Burned Up the Mic

            On Tuesday December 19^th I got a return call from one of the events coordinators at the Gladstone Hotel in response to my request to use the Art Bar for the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy’s 25^th anniversary. I explained to her that this had been a writers open stage that ran every week in the Art Bar for almost six years. First off she gave me the disappointing news that the Art Bar is no longer available for events because Ryerson University uses the space as a gallery. I said I was still interested in using the Gladstone for the celebration but when she asked me if I wanted catering of food and beverages I told her that we could just get our drinks from the bar. She asked if I was looking to rent a room for this event but I informed her that I’m a poor poet on welfare and that I was hoping they would consider me as part of the Gladstone’s cultural heritage and not charge me any money. She let me know that she wasn’t the one to talk to about this event because she handles rentals but she would pass my contact information on to one of the cultural coordinators at the Gladstone.

            That evening I packed up my guitar, my pick and my tuner and headed out to Shab-e She’r. On Brock Avenue, in addition to the bicycle route signs painted in white on the road there was also printed in large letters was the word “SCHOOL”. This is very dangerous. Stupid parents taking their children to school for the first time might read that, think that’s where the school is and just leave their kids in the middle of the street.

            On College Street, just before Ossington, I passed a parked van that had a Christmas wreath hanging over its wing mirror.

            While I was locking my bike in front of the St Stephen in the Fields Anglican Church, Bänoo Zan came out for her pre-event cigarette. On my way in I said hi and didn’t bother teasing her about her smoking this time. 

            Inside, Cad Gold Jr. and Tom Smarda were already there.

            A few minutes later, Bänoo came to the stage and announced that she was looking for “brave” people to sign up for the open stage. I asked if it was okay to read if I was a coward. My theory is that there is really no such thing as bravery and that every apparently courageous thing anyone does is actually motivated by fear. I read or sing my poetry on stage because I am afraid not to.

            I tuned my guitar and was running through the song I planned to do that night, when Tom came over with his guitar to play along. I went through the piece a couple of times and then another that I plan to do at Shab-e She’r in about six months. Tom asked if it was my own or one of my translations and I said it was the second. Cad teased that I only do translations because I’ve run out of my own ideas. Tom argued, “I’m sure he still does original stuff too.” Cad doesn’t know any better but it’s a bit annoying when people don’t realize just how original and creative poetic translations are. I know that Bänoo does translations of Persian poets, so she’d probably back me up on this. I think that people that don’t do translations think that a translator is just finding English equivalents to all the words of the other language. But there are more factors to a poem than just the words. If there are rhymes then new rhymes must be found; languages rarely have the same word play and metaphors and so new ones have to be found that still fit the meaning of the original poem.

            For example, “Comme un Boomerang”, a song by Serge Gainsbourg that I recently translated has to have every other line rhyme with “rang” and still convey the meaning of the return of the memory of a painful relationship. There are a lot fewer words like that in the English language than there are in French. One of the verses directly translates as: “I have on the tip of my tongue/your first name almost erased/twisted like a boomerang/my mind had rejected/ from my memory because of the carousing/and your love exhausted me.”

            My adaptation of the verse is: “On the tip of my tongue hangs/your name that I’d tried to clear/twisted like a boomerang/my mind had thrown so far from here/the memory of the whole shebang/when your love drained all the atmosphere.”

             I started playing “One Hundred Hookers” and then Cad told Tom that he’d co-written the song with me. I corrected him that I had based the song on one line from one of his poems but he had not co-written it. In addition to the line I used I wrote it inspired what I know about Cad’s life and the claims that he makes. He declared that he’d co-written the song by telepathically sending me the information. I told him he couldn’t even psychopathically send messages to his own brain. He countered, “Yes I can because I’m a psychopath!” I added, “You’re a licensed psychopath” and he liked that.

            It was getting close to start time, so Tom went to his seat. Bänoo didn’t start on time though because I think she was waiting for George Elliot Clarke. He finally breezed in at about ten after, came up to me, shook my hand and sat down beside me, but one seat away. I asked him how, “How’s the poetry teaching business?” He answered, “If only I could teach!” I inquired if the university wasn’t letting him teach, but I’d misunderstood. In his comment he’d been trying to show humility about is teaching abilities. I wondered if he was doing Canadian Poetry again this year but he wasn’t. This term he had taught African Canadian Literature and Black Epics of the Americas with a focus on the long poem. He said next year he’d be teaching the postgraduate Creative Writing course. I told him that I want to take that course once I have my BA. He said, “Well, you have the talent, so I expect to see you there!” That was nice for him to say and encouraging, since the Masters course only accepts seven students a year.

            I told George that I was currently taking 20^th Century U. S. Literature. He asked if we were covering any non-fiction. I answered that we looked at some, such as Booker T. Washington’s “Up from Slavery”. George commented that Washington’s autobiography had a lot of fiction in it. I added, “Don’t they all?” He nodded.

            We started at around 19:15 with the Laboni Islam reciting the native land acknowledgement.

            Filling in as photographer was Diem Lafortune. I’ve known her for years as a pretty good musician and songwriter with the stage name of Mama D, but I never knew her real name or that she did photography.

            John Portelli kicked off the open mic with a poem called “For Walid” – “Every day I see you on your way to her … warm veil … Once there was Palestine  … orange on her twin breasts … Like you, I am fugitive … without knowing who I am … born to give birth to love … The prophets are no longer scrupulous … the way pomegranates ripen … You, lover of the princess … the robin has chosen to perch right next to you …”

            Before the next reader, Bänoo took a moment to acknowledge the Shab-e She’r team and to announce that one member, Giovanna Riccio was sick at home.

            Waleed was next and told us that what he would be reading was something he’d written the night before – “When people see the chair and not the person … the identity is stolen away.”

            From another poem – “If you only knew … the words I used when I described you … the battles I have to let you rest … what would you do?”

            Laura DeLeon read two poems.

            From “Ode to Autumn” – “Trail gazing above and star gazing below … the deep chill arrives … before the uncertainty … the striking darkness cast against the night sky … the wayfarer shall find his way home.”

            From “Winter Be My Bride” – “Take my hand and learn my love … Kiss my eyes so that I may see the way … I have the thorn in my hand / you wear the crown … Why are hearts made of stone?”

            Peyton Brien read “Tales of Twins and Wings and Other Lives” – “This twin within … in moments it is she who rules … glimpsing fierce gods … We are knives as we struggle with our magnificent failures … This distant smile … Nothing but ruin … No silk roads glisten to guide our way … Who are you now … the quicksilver sky thundering … Death swept down … Each of us offered death a poem … That doesn’t mean she draws my twin and I into her arms … We have wings / Why do we not fly? / No answer …”

            Diem Lafortune read “On Holy Back” – “My wound is still bleeding / and all the hugs in the world aren’t helping … I need you to hold me / for all the mistakes … The reds will bleed out … rewinding my flesh … I need you to hold me like a child … like only a good poem can rescue me …”

            Then she read “Fishing” – Where is that place / between agony and ecstasy … Where is that silent pool where the rod tips, trips and ripples … Where is that place where no means no … Where maybe is a cold, deep place … Where without the muse to cut the line … Where is that place where truth can gut the lies?”

            Nick Micelli read “Solstice Poem” – “The longest night … My soul goes down deep … With old faithful sadness I am never along … As the gloom fills with light there’ll be none left but me.”

            Annick read two poems.

From “Magpies” – “A pest / quotidian / You say ‘beautiful’ / and spark derision … The whiteness of the sky … rippling our vision into mirage …”

From Translation Politics – “Finger fucking you / came so easy last night … You said your body is strange / but no, it’s like a song.”

            A few minutes into the readings one of the scheduled photographers had arrived. Bänoo announced at this point that a third had shown up and on hearing, George turned to me and enthused, “We’ve got paparazzi here tonight!”

            Our first feature was Lisa Richter, who first of all announced that some of her ESL students had come to hear her read.

            Her first poem was “What You Find In the Attic” – “Beating the muffled footsteps into submission … Bouquet of spider veins … The first great love that you … developed in a high school darkroom … the past worms its way back …”

            From “Long Exposure” – “Sometime after midnight I found our old photos and contact sheets … I scratched a mosquito bite until it bled … You backstroked towards me … beneath the shadows that swam on the sloped ceiling … my hair still dripping with lake …”

            From “Boxing Day” – “Along the curve of St Urbain … holding o to their original shape … dark in Montreal … lifted off the loading dock … Green things groundhog up through the thick mud … breathe in the stunted season …”

            Lisa told us that she wrote a series of poems based on some photo albums that she’d found abandoned in a park.

            From “Mountain Peak at Red Rose” – “Nothing in these mountains would ever suggest convenience stores … keeping propeller skins of vertigo away … intertwined more for warmth than love … turning speech into constellations of syllables … dry needles and bedrock.”

            From “Cabin at Red Rose” – Blackened roof … boards once nailed together … history of incomplete stories … A white man spearing the myth of vertical power … Extract the Earth’s … viscera and … process … setting out to chisel the mountain’s heart.”

            Lisa informed us that this was the last night of Hanukkah.

            From “How to Write a Hanukkah Poem” – “Choose your preferred spelling from the seven or eight available … Latkes. Paper towels to soak up the grease … paper bags to soak up the grease from the paper towels … Hard flakes of coloured wax … Don’t call the menorah a hanukkiah, the proper word … you will alienate most people … Make dreidl games dirty … Make space latkes that will get you high … Snort lines off … the Talmud. Forget about inviting distant relatives … a catalogue of scars …”

            Lisa shared that she was living in Tel Aviv during the second intifada.

            From “Gaza Under Siege” – “ … house sitting … watering aloe and spider monkey … Slide open the cool, mirrored doors … the nearby shudder of brush steel machines … the death toll of children in Gaza reaches five-hundred … Sip your wine … until it reads as diluted blood. Read the horror. Remember the sound of the fireworks in Tel Aviv … could just as easily have been rockets … in Gaza, bodies … wood … and metal … amass in baroque jumble … On Facebook … feeds of loathing, fear culled from recipes … -- they brought this onto themselves, they hate us more than they love their own – morsels you can no longer keep down, no longer … kosher …”

            Lisa’s next poem, “Please Don’t Go! We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So!” was inspired by Maurice Sendak – “Summer of ’35. The monsters / in your Brooklyn closet / go Look at him / not a little / pischer anymore … Uncle Schmuel kisses you … Auntie Rosie’s bosom / is a bosom … of moist cleavage she pulls / your face into … groans of guttural Yiddish // On the way home from / school the Horowitz boys / corner you in the alley / call you faygeleh … mocking you / with flopping wrists, spritzing / lisp-spray through their teeth / into your eyes … mash your face / with meaty fists //  … someday / in Greenwich village, you’ll find / other boys … who will spoon / you on lumpy mattresses … whose / bodies you will devour with groans / of guttural Yiddish // the hairy-starred night, your breath a silver / diaphanous shroud in … onyx air … armies of arms / holding up a bridegroom’s chair … // you land … where the wild ones / grunt and dance the world into creation / scoop you up into a shaggy embrace / you hope they won’t let go.”

            From “If I Could Be Anyone I Would Be Winona Ryder” – “She’s corseted and hoop skirted … She’s that shiny haired girl drinking big gulps on a Dallas morning … That one cup of java and one Camel Light pass between them … Looking for someone to shoot the shit …”

            Lisa’s final poem was written for Kate Braid and entitled “Form Work” – “Rank with sweat, hard hated / in the trenches where men before you / have have slipped and stuttered, you build the molds / that retain words or cement, construct / foundations … you split the earth’s stone lip, heavy heel / on the shovel, grunt as it slides in / like the sound of a poem cleaving / when the heart is attuned to the breath … loved the honest thud … generous / creak of ladder rung … the reassurance of gravity … Let this act of making go on. Let this winter morning sink … fangs into my hide … you are slinging your hammer … showing me how it’s done.”

            Lisa Richter is addicted to lists. Of course, nothing is off limits to a poet but if the poem is written around the list as opposed to the list being a servant to the poem, it becomes a trap. Lisa is also heavily in need of an editor because overwrites her poems. She adds far more descriptions and adjectives than are necessary to convey the meaning. Quite often she makes a description obvious and then she puts more description in as if she’s not confident that she’s done enough. She needs an Ezra Pound to, as T. S. Eliot said he did for him on The Wasteland, perform a caesarean on the poem before it stumbles into overkill.

            Bänoo called a break, during which time I softly practiced my song and to my left watched a continuous procession of people come up to speak with George and to give him things. Kintsugi (Claudia) gave him a beautiful Christmas card from homemade paper and some excerpts from her novel; John Portelli gave George a book of poetry. A few others approached him as well and it reminded me a of the nativity scene, with George Elliot Clarke being the central figure.

            After the break, Bänoo introduced George as having been the fourth poet laureate of Toronto and as the current parliamentary poet laureate of Canada. She declared that he is the best poet laureate because he comes to Shab-e She’r sometimes to perform on the open stage.

            To be fair, I don’t think that George would come to read on the open mic at Shab-e She’r if his girlfriend was not volunteering there.

            George began with a shout out to Giovanna Riccio, whom he said was “the companion of my heart”. He said Shab-e She’r is special because that’s where he and Giovanna met. I assume they came together as a result of being the two features a couple of years ago. Bänoo didn’t mention that George being the feature this time was the first break from her record of never having the same feature twice.

            George also thanked the “battery of paparazzi” that was working the floor this night. I think that having his picture taken is something that George likes, along with being addressed as “Doctor Clarke”.

            George read from his most recent collection, called “Canticles I Volume II”.

            He began with “Post-Bellum Negro Inventory” – “Now cometh … the precipitously iniquitous Negro … the cotton pickin, banjo pickin, nose pickin Negro / the recidivist, throat cutting, Republican-Party Negro / the lavendar-gum, ivory-tooth, indigo-sable Negro / the tubercular, diabetic, syphilitic Negro … the hobo, itinerant, nowhere to go Negro / the alcoholic, Catholic, imbecilic Negro … the Negro doctor … the bamboozling and/or wham-bam Negro … the Negro who sleeps at your table and eats in your bed / the Negro of magnificent assets (auctioned off) / the denim’d-down damn- y’all-to-hell Negro … the Negro of needless sentences and useless explanations … the Negro whose sex imposes midnight on a cloudy nymph … the Negro whose head is stuck inside a lyncher’s rope … the silly coot Negro, tomcatting and twat stealing still / the Uncle Tom Negro, quick with Bible verse and razor blade / the Negro spewing Machiavelli and chewing macaroni … the Negro who never lets your blushing wife rest.”

            George explained that in this book he takes on characters and writes in their voices.

            He clued us in that his next poem asks what if Malcolm X had published his autobiography when he was still a gangster. From “The Autobiography of Detroit Red (1946)” – “ … we got summoned to the spastic casket opening / to view the cold drainage … his sliced off trunk / limbs dirtied by slippage neath the trolley / in the nigger-hating street … a hearty Upset, an inversion: His Death … Papa’s played “an exaggerated suicide” … Mom’s complexion mirrored a boiled egg / She now studied white people thoroughly / could spy the penis a Klansman … Her prayers enunciated puke … How could we retaliate / for Earl Little’s bedraggled corpse … transfigure Malcolm Little … into … Detroit Red … do creature-pleasing feel-good Crime / while maintaining a spine of ice … bitter in my Splendour … a shoe helps in trampling a throat / know how to appeal and how to appal … enjoy the pure groans of a doll’s twitching / my slang flowed vivid and acidic as graffiti … To be destructively digestive / to rivals, I’d be as blunt and backward / as is a toilet flushing … To be big on Sex and short on Love … diddling white witches all night … I boasted a machine gun / and I was trigger-happy, dapper / no jigaboo bugaboo / Detroit Red … allies me with Mao … authentically / drastic … mama’s in a madhouse / accepting antiquated lobotomies / and brothers have gone so insane / with nationalized Islam / they think themselves Negro Mormon / squares: same shoe, shirts, suits  / (I snatched up a Qu’ran in a liquor store / that is either a sign / or it’s dissonance) … I got into the rackets by osmosis … I fell in with Sophia / slutty beauty … tight cunt putain … She be surreally sexy … nipples erect under the bossy fluorescence / of streetlamps … she was humid, a groaning anchor … mastered her bones … white as death … tried her Virgin Mary miraculous vagine … cigarette sobbing smoke … I helped rough up Sicilians … gangsters must be soldiers / never civilians … we’d tear out intestines as if ropes /  from a crimson pulley … faces looked like crushed crabs / only stench could be heard … (One mobster got sliced and diced … a happy dog jumped upon him / gobbled … High time to vamoose from Manhattan … crooks with a hard on / for a blonde wig and a boob job … we rummaged damagingly / every property Sophia conned open … Shorty almost short circuited / when he heard our sentence … Bunny Yeager / is snapping Betty Page … Mao’s kickin the white boys outta China / impeccably sinister, as I must become.” 

            From “Spirituals” – “God never say no mumblin word … Our good god be a man of war … I hate the cross … Ogle Jesus … Wiley as Homer … gleans soulful sweets from his lyric orchard … Adam and Eve, like us, be Black …”

            George’s next poem was about the famous boxing match in 1938 between Joe Louis (the Brown Bomber) and Max Schmeling. He let us know that this one was written in the voice of Langston Hughes and informed us with a whisper that Hughes was “also a Communist!”

            From “Louis vs. Schmeling (1939)” – “Joe’s blows arrive from vesuvian depths / I watch Max’s shoes … like feet having a heart attack … I observe men’s hatted heads / jump and jerk like violin bows … Dude emerges as a sassy-ass assassin / set to wallop infuriatingly … that diplomat shat outta the asshole / of Berlin … Schmeling squats … Carpet bombings occupy that pale visage … he seems lame, then tumbling … like a ripped apart swan …”

            George explained that during the Fugitive Slave Act, any Black could be snatched off the street and shipped south, whether they were escapees or not. From “The New York Times Uncovers Arson” – “Slaves packed that burning house … Not even our most anxious guitars / get close to the precise noise / an infant makes / as fire eats through the flesh … Torrid immolation was their church … eligible to be destroyed … bodies looked like blackened fish … under the ragged moon … heart-strings sagged out of tune … The blazing house resembled a bird cage … (Many do skedaddle to Gam Sham … as discretely as poisons / slip into soups.) … My nightmare privilege was to hear … each crackling diminuendo of the darkies … Then showered down indifferent starlight … Raking the embers, I felt sick to find / a prune shaped man who’d burst open / his guts frying like all the pork / he likely loved to eat … One mother had a tarpaper spine / her face was a charred shoe // I even stepped on - and squashed - a heart … It squirted out as my foot pressed down … I stumbled over a hybrid body / a mulatto weeping caramel … a babe already a lantern / of lustrous flies … charred nudity / and lacerating sunlight … No crows will fuss over this burnt meat.”

            George announced that his last poem was going to be “Bessie Smith’s Seminal Blues (ca 1935)”. As an introduction, he recounted how Smith had died on the road trying to get to a Negro hospital because the nearby White hospital had refused to give her a blood transfusion. George was about to read, but then he stopped and decided that,  because we were in a church, he didn’t think it was appropriate to read it because it’s too raunchy. Some people moaned in disappointment. As George was turning the pages looking for another poem, I called out, “Jesus says it’s okay!” George said, “Okay, Christian, I will accept your permission!”

            From “Bessie Smith’s Seminal Blues (ca 1935)” – “Won’t take no mean bully for my daddy / Want no cock-jammed-up-his-arse fool … nor no blackface Uncle Tom fool … take a snake-hip man with a jackhammer tool … I like a gin-white belle who’s spinny / while her jaws be slurpin my tits / I make her twat twist and shimmy … Then apes leap atop each jigglin bitch … True: I’m an adventurous sistah / Got a bottomless uncanny cunt … Split white rum with rat’s-ass Rastus … I like boys with the Grand Canyon for brains … Serve me a gal … Her disobedient panties bubblin … sweet shenanigan juice … so she blushes and gushes blues.”

            Before leaving the stage, George told us that he had a CD of his poetry that he recorded with jazz musicians in Italy and that he was selling it for “Only twenty dollars.” The audience came back with the traditional ritualistic and comedic audience response to such a declaration of price: “Only twenty dollars?” George then turned this into a rhythmic call and response chant as he kept on repeating his phrase and the audience enthusiastically participated.

            One of the many striking aspects of George Elliot Clarke’s poetry is his rich command of vocabulary and his ability to not only marry sophisticated words and street words, but to do it in ways that create a type of syllabic music when they are read aloud. Because of this his writing takes on an odd but effective hybrid of academic and down and dirty language, as if he’d turned a reference library into a barrelhouse. It’s hard to describe in writing George’s reading style. His emphasis on certain syllables in a given phrase is quite often improvised and he may repeat an entire line once or twice for meaning and rhythmic effect, even though it’s not repeated in the text. George Elliot Clarke is one of the best poets around.

            Bänoo seamlessly continued with the second half of the open stage and I was the first one she called.

            I stood with my guitar in front of the microphones and joked that I couldn’t stand further back because George had just sucked all of the air off the stage. 

            I played and sang my translation of Jacques Prevert’s “Les Feuilles Mortes” – “ … Well, dead autumn leaves can be raked up and collected / That’s one thing that I did not forget / Yes, dead autumn leaves can be raked up and collected / but so as well can memories and regrets / that the north wind takes to be lost then / into the night’s cold oblivion / But one more thing that I have not forgotten / is when you used to sing me your song // And you and I were like that song / when you loved me and I loved you / and we both lived together as one / you loving me and me loving you // Ah, but life often unravels sweet romance / so silently and with so much ease / and the sea erases from the sand / the footprints of lovers / on the beach …”

            My playing wasn’t flawless but it wasn’t too bad. All my extra practicing out of fear of screwing the song up seemed to pay off.

            After me was Rajinerpal Pal. From “Why Now?” – “Because destruction has become an operating system … Because an entire history can be whitewashed … Because there are many ways of being held prisoner … Because the comedians have become the soothsayers … Because we celebrated too soon … Because the centre cannot hold … Because there is an unlimited supply of fresh hells … Because this is no time for silence.”

            Daniel Kolos read “A Sack of Sugar” – “Bombs exploded … Russian soldiers robbed civilians of jewellery … The residents were trapped … Russian soldiers hunted German snipers … soldiers in red-scarred helmets … I was in my mother’s arms … A soldier gave my mother a sack of sugar … She created small bags of sugar for other edibles …”

            From Cad Gold Junior’s poem – “I wake up from another dream of you in a cold sweat … not feeling myself … You are right beside me … laughing about the joke I made about your see-through crotchless panties … What I’m left with is my soul.”

            From Kintsugi’s first poem – “I never wanted children … One stayed on a little too long … A future was born.”

            Kintsugi sang her poem “Song of Loss” in a high voice – “I love you / I miss you / I want you / You were dead / You were dead / You were dead / I want you / I need you / I miss you / I love you / Love you / Love you.”

            I assume that Kintsugi chose her stage name after the Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with gold and lacquer in such a way that the cracks and break points become gorgeous golden patterns and the fixed pottery is considered to be much more beautiful for having been broken.

            From Jovan Shadd’s first poem – “I’m the club megapixels … Self promotion is the new language of achievement … Nothing exists that can’t be proven on the internet … so I’m waiting on notifications to notify me I’m still here.”        

            From Jovan’s second poem – “My mother and father when they call my name … the literature as litmus … I want to speak the same … I want to speak it so it differs.”

            From Khadeeja Sajid’s poem – “I’ll teach her everything I know … in six-point font … She’ll be half as comprehensible and twice as strong … She’ll have dark skin and dark remarks … She won’t be pretty and she won’t be quiet … She’ll be my poetry and I can’t wait to meet my baby.”

            George said he had to leave, but I bought one of his CDs before he left.

            Chai was wearing a t-shirt that was divided into two categories, a “Black List” and a “Green List”. The Black list had a column of environmentally damaging things and the Green list had the opposite.

            Chai read the same poem that he has read at Shab-e She’r for at least the last six months, “The ABCDs of Climate Change” – “A is for Alberta … B is for B.C. … C is for California, Canada, carbon footprint … D is for downsizing … H is for hurricane … T is for torrents … W is for do you wish or want a weather wall by your window … Reduce your carbon footprint … No poem can save you … They do not need your approval … There is no app.”

            John Mathew had a long black beard and long black hair that was dyed at the back and sides. He shared that he’d been writing for two months. He read three poems.

            From “Body” – “Feminine … Unabashedly feminine … A tapestry woven … Sexual, textual … I can’t find it doctor … Femininity not in this body …”

            From “This is You” – “Your fascinations with my oscillations … I’m sorry you’re pressed … Trespassing your fiefdom … I’m unlike you.”

            From “Child” – “I was was I … Son daughter … Chest out, standing tall … Wrong … Boy … I am was always my mother’s child / I still will be.”

            Susan sang with a strong and impressive voice, her poem in the form of an old style slave chant at the very roots of the Blues, with accompaniment from Nick Micelli as he played the response to each call with mallets on a tone drum.

            From Susan’s poem - “Master … move them bones … Mistress caught them when she come on home … A child was born, twas lily white … She done died when she had that child … Put your body on the garbage heap … Mistress move to a county over there … Mistress says she moved cause she got so feared … Master’s lily white child work along side … Put that shovel in the ground … He wants her buried and he wants her blessed … Master take a Bible done say your prayer … He done bury her there … No mistress here, no mistress I see … He gonna wait till he gonna die … He gonna join she in the big blue sky.”

            Rex Ricardus read “Traditions” – “ … Nobody with my blood understood … I hate my family … They never found that some things are more important than others … Look daddy, see what I can do … Learning to do something for the very first time … Not traditions anymore, just symptoms …”

            Shafia Al-Khair explained that his poem had been written during the Arab Spring “when everyone was happy!” The poem was called “Osiris” and Shafia told us he could only read it in Arabic.

            The final poet of the night was Tom Smarda, who stepped onto the stage with his guitar before Bänoo had a chance to introduce him. In introducing his song, Tom said, “There’s a reason we create poverty … There’s a choice between starving and joining the military.”

            From “Recruitment Into the Military” – “If people could be coerced into jumping off the roof of a downtown office tower and yell some nationalistic slogan, and were told that they’d get a medal if they enlisted, would they do it? Would they make the ultimate sacrifice … Get hit with teargas … Get hit with batons … The full weight of the military state against those who demonstrate … Would politicians ever think to send their own kids … Would we be any closer to peace?”

            At the end of the song I shouted, “Sign me up, Tom!”

            He called back, “You’re drafted, Christian!”

            Before leaving I went over to chat with Cy Strom, who was with Laura DeLeon and Nick Micelli. Nick brought up the piece that I’d done and that I’d mentioned it was a translation. I explained that I’d translated it from Jacques Prevert and that the music was by Joseph Kosma, with whom Prevert collaborated on both songs and movies. Prevert wrote the screenplays for several films, most notably, “Les Enfants du Paradis”, which is my favourite film of all time, and Kosma wrote the scores. Cy of course was familiar with the song “Les Feuilles Mortes” and with a famous and less interesting English adaptation called “Autumn Leaves”. At that moment I couldn’t pull the lyricist’s name out of my memory. The name “Mercer” kept on popping into my head but I kept thinking that it couldn’t be Rick Mercer. On the way home I recalled that it was Johnny Mercer.

            Cy commented that in my performance there had been only momentary hints at the original melody and he assumed that was my intention. I confirmed that I usually try to make my adaptations different from the originals. I admit that my version is barely recognizable musically but it’s also much closer in meaning to “Les Feuilles Mortes”. I could learn to play my version in the original, recognizable style, but mine just evolved a different way but I still think it sounds good anyway, though probably less sweet.

            When I was unlocking my bike, Tom left the church and came over to hug me goodbye. He told me that he prefers my own songs to my translations. I told him I can do both. The translations are an interesting writing exercise and they also expand my guitar playing into unfamiliar styles and chords.

            After Tom left, Cad came up and walked with me almost to Ossington, all the while telling me about all the many wealthy, successful and sexy girlfriends that he claims to have nowadays, that are all doctors and lawyers and that love him for his body and his intellect. I’ve noticed that since Cad turned 60 this year his “girlfriends” have suddenly become professional women. Strange though that none of these successful women that are supposedly nuts about him ever go with him anywhere or even show up on social media.

Flannery O'Connor

            On Monday a crew was across the street jackhammering the sidewalk. This was a different company than was here up until a week ago. There sure does seem to be a lot of street surgery going on in this neighbourhood.

            Despite my cold being gone I still have an oppressive amount of phlegm in my throat that made it difficult to swallow when I laid down for a while.

            I finished reading Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”. She sure can spin a dark, disturbing yet funny tale. A proper middle class single woman had a 32-year-old daughter that was missing a leg because it had been blown off in a hunting accident when she was ten. The girl had gone on to earn a PHD but ended up just living with her mother and stewing in bitterness as she thought about how much smarter she was than everyone else around her. One day a young Bible salesman came to the house. The mother thought him charming and simple and invited him to stay for dinner. Later he secretly arranged to meet the next day for a picnic with the disabled daughter. They went to the loft of an abandoned barn and started making love but he wanted her to take off her leg because he seemed fascinated with it. She finally submitted to his request and he revealed that he didn’t even believe in the Bible. He was a collector of grotesque curiosities like when once he’d taken a young woman’s glass eye from her. He put the wooden leg in his briefcase and left with it, leaving her in the loft.

            I practiced playing “Dead Autumn Leaves” several times but I’m not sure if practice helps. I guess it does but it would take a lot for me to get good at playing that song.

            I tried to get in touch with the booking agent at the Gladstone Hotel to try to book the Art Bar for the 25^th anniversary of the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy next year. Their website is hard to manoeuvre and the link to their email doesn’t work, so finally I called to leave a message. Hopefully someone will get back to me since the ideal place for an Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy reunion would be the Gladstone Art Bar.

            I watched the film “Logan” and was quite impressed with both the highly emotional story and the action were interwoven. Although this story is set ten years in the future and in an alternate universe in which all the mutants have been killed off except for Professor X and Wolverine, who are both dying, this story presented what were apparently the final performances by Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman in their portrayals of these characters. The movie was a fitting swan song for both of them.

            Professor Charles Xavier, who has the most powerful mind on Earth, is now dying of a degenerative brain disease and the seizures that result from it cause mass paralysis and sometimes death to anyone within hundreds of meters around him. In order to save lives, Wolverine has to make sure that Charles receives regular injections and pills that hold back the seizures. Meanwhile two illegal immigrants from Mexico enter into the story: a woman and a ten-year-old girl named Laura. The woman offers Logan $50,000 to help her and the girl get to Canada. Logan agrees and goes to make the arrangements but when he returns the woman has been murdered and the girl is missing. Then the Reavers arrive. They are the elite government military force that was responsible for killing off the mutants. They are looking for the girl. Wolverine fights them, though he is sick and weakened now and his self-healing powers are failing. The girl helps by tossing a metal pipe and knocking out the Reavers’ leader.

            Logan takes Laura to the compound where he’s been holding Professor X in a specially sealed metal building that partially contains his powers. Charles tells Logan that Laura is a mutant but Logan does not believe it because all the mutants are dead.

            Just as they are all about to leave for Canada the Reavers attack. While Wolverine is fighting them Laura enters the fray, revealing that she is not only a mutant but that she has the same powers as Wolverine, with the addition of foot claws as well as hand claws and she uses both as she fights like a berserker. Charles later explains that foot claws would be natural on a female version of himself and he gives the example that female lions often defend themselves and their young with their hind claws.

            They watch a video left by the woman that had brought Laura north. She tells the story of a Reaver research facility in Mexico where she had been employed as a nurse. The purpose of the facility was to create controllable mutant soldiers from the DNA that had been collected from the mutants they’d eliminated. The problem was though that the children that resulted were not as manipulatable as they’d expected and after ten years they changed their plan to just making clones of the dead mutants. That meant that they would be eliminating the children from the previous project. That’s when the nurses and doctors rebelled and tried to help the children escape. Some of them managed to make it to North Dakota where they set up a temporary home until they were all together so they could cross the border and be free. They didn’t really say why Canada would be a safe place for mutants though. Some forum contributors theorize that the reason the Reavers wanted to stop the kids before they crossed the Canadian border was because there was something strong enough to protect them on the other side. That might have been the Canadian mutant team, Alpha Flight, which work for the Canadian government and so that would explain why they didn’t cross the border to help Wolverine.

            Charles informs Logan that Laura is his daughter but even after learning that he almost abandons her a couple of times. He is very reluctant to bond with her and doesn’t really do so until the end, just seconds before he dies.

Bad Casting

            I think my cold was gone quite a while ago but I’m still stuffed up every morning.

I spent a lot of Sunday just getting caught up on my journal and writing about Saturday’s food bank adventure.

I finished watching the 2010 movie Howl, which features James Franco as Allen Ginsberg and John Hamm as the lawyer defending Lawrence Ferlinghetti against the obscenity charges that were laid against him for publishing the book. I liked some of the animated sequences but I think they should have just made a separate movie with animation.  I also didn’t find James Franco to be a very convincing Allen Ginsberg. His beard looked like it had been drawn on with a magic marker and I didn’t like the way he read Howl. They should have gotten somebody like Gary Oldman to play the part. Franco is half Jewish but he looks more like his father’s half Portuguese half Swedish side of the family. I think that even Daniel Radcliffe in “Kill Your Darlings” looked more like a young Ginsberg than James Franco.

The Dizzy Juggler

            It was already 12:20 on Saturday when I got home from the food bank with my groceries. I had ten minutes to put everything away and then I had to leave to meet my friend Brian at Sneaky Dees. The place was packed and all I could get was a booth in the noisy and dark part of the restaurant. After a few minutes though I saw a group pack up and leave that had been occupying a table by the window. I asked the waitress if I could move and she told me, “No problem!”

Brian was about ten minutes late because there’d been an “injury at track level” while he was on the subway train.

I told Brian that lunch and beer were on me and explained that I’d had a bit of a windfall this autumn because of receiving a retroactive payment from the Toronto Housing Allowance Program.

            We shared a pitcher of a nice pilsner and after a glass each we ordered lunch. I had the Texas Egg, which consisted of a tortilla bowl filled with chilli, cheese and a fried egg. It was good but the chilli fries that Brian ordered looked very good too and a lot more substantial.

            Brian told me that he’d had a problem with severe dizziness for a couple of weeks recently and he figured out that it was otoconia, which are loose crystals in the inner ear. The condition is called Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. It happens when carbon crystals fall out of the inner ear organ and then down the canal to block it and disrupt the flow of fluid. It tends to go away by itself but certain head movements can help it along. I assume that the yoga that I do every day, which includes head turning exercises and tilting forward and backwards, helps to keep that condition at bay.

            Brian also shared that he had taken up juggling and playing the dulcimer.

            I told Brian that I might be having a 25^th anniversary celebration of the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy next year. He kind of hinted that he might be interested in reuniting Christian and the Lions for that event.