Beachcombers with Kites

            On Tuesday morning I woke up at 3:20 because I had to pee. The apartment was cold and so when I got back into bed I pulled the comforter over me. I usually just keep it bunched up in the corner of my bed because the cotton sheet is most of the time warm enough if not too much. After I went back to sleep the heat came on and so once the 5:00 alarm started crowing I woke up to find that I'd been doped by the warmth. It took a while to clear my head.

That afternoon I worked on editing a story that I wanted to read that night at the Shab-e She’r poetry reading. I tried to take a siesta in the early afternoon but I only lay down for half an hour. I think I couldn’t sleep because I had the story on my mind, so I got up and finished it.

Just before leaving I printed one page of the story, then I flipped it to print the other side but instead of going to “File” and then to “Print”, I made the mistake of clicking on the image of the printer on my tool bar, which caused the entire 26 page document to print. I thought about stopping the printer but I was afraid that would cause paper to get stuck, so I just shrugged and let 26 pages get wasted.

It was drizzling as I rode west on College Street, but not enough for me to get wet. When I stepped into the St Stephen in the Fields Church, Bänoo Zan greeted me with a hug because it had been two months since I’d been there last. If I’d come at the end of February I probably wouldn’t have gotten the grace of an embrace.

On this night, in addition to the regular poetry event with two features and an open mic, Shab-e She’r was also celebrating the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, which means “new year”, but also “new day” and “new light”. The actual date for Nowruz this year was the Tuesday before, but since Shab-e She’r falls on the final Tuesday of the month they couldn’t have feted the event on that date. A week late is a reasonable range of tardiness though for still grasping the spirit of an event. I would be okay with people celebrating my birthday up to a hundred days late.

On the right side of the seating and against the wall was the traditional Persian New Year table setting, or Haft Seen, consisting of seven food items. The most prominent display was a pot containing what looked like live green grass. Arranged in relation to the grass were smaller, cup sized bowls holding: some kind of dark pudding; some of what looked like dates to me but I think they were the fruit of the oleaster tree, a bulb of garlic; an apple; and some coins. There’s supposed to also be sumac berries and vinegar, but I didn’t notice those. There were two candles, several drinking glasses and off to the side of the table was a bowl holding what looked like a punch made from nuts.  From what I could find on Wikipedia this seems to correspond to the Haft Mewa, which is an Afghani table setting consisting of raisins, oleaster fruit, pistachios, hazelnuts, prunes, walnuts and almonds. Although I didn’t see any in this display, I’ve read that the tradition also includes painted eggs and that the Easter eggs of western culture have their origin in Persia. On top of all that there is an old man with a white beard that brings presents for children. If I find out that the Persians invented Halloween too I am going to scream.

I went to the washroom, which smelled like toenails. In the gym there were a lot of little girls of about nine years of age, some of them wearing bunny ears, all running around and playing some kind of vigorous hopping and running game. Maybe it was a Brownie meeting.

On the way back I ran into Cy Strom. He reached with his right hand to shake mine but I gave him my left because my right was still wet. He said he often doesn’t dry his hands so he doesn’t mind. I told him that for some strange reason my left hand always dries quicker than my right after I’ve washed them. He couldn’t wrap his head around why that would be.

I stopped to chat with Tom Smarda and Sydney White. Tom was reminiscing about when we first met in Vancouver. He’d thought it had been the early 70s but I didn’t arrive in Vancouver until May 26, 1978, so it was probably sometime after that that we started hanging out. He was busking with an electric guitar in front of a bank tower and he would always say, “Greetings!” instead of “Hi”. I recall that in our first conversation he had said something about people not being able to see the forest from the trees, but I argued that it’s more accurate to say that the masses can’t see the trees for the forest.

Sydney was talking about how she’d recently paid $5000 to a publisher to get her book of poetry published. I told her that publishers aren’t supposed to charge money to authors to publish and distribute their works. She was indignant and insisted that she’d gotten a good deal. I didn’t argue with her because it would have been a waste of time, but what she’d gone with is a vanity publisher and it’s the loser’s way to go. Nobody takes your writing seriously if you had to pay a publisher. They are supposed to publish it because they think they can make money off the merit of the work.

As the reading was about to start at about 19:10, Bänoo discovered that neither of the two microphones was working. They would phase in and out, but mostly out. Tom decided to try to fix them from the amp and so Bänoo delayed the kick off for five minutes, which turned to ten ineffectual minutes. Finally we did the entire night without microphones and it worked fine, although there was a tendency for poets to read at floor level and throughout the night to edge further and further back until some of them were actually standing behind the front row.

While people had been waiting for things to start they had begun engaging in several conversations, which Bänoo had to ring a set of silver consecration bells in order to get the audience to concentrate.

Bänoo announced that it was Persian New Year and indicated the table setting, telling us that it followed both Iranian and Afghani traditions.

We began, as usual with the land acknowledgement recited by Laboni Islam.

The first open stage performer was Norman Allan, who started with a short poem – “She carried her wounds with no frailty … The impermanence of her beauty is a lullaby …”

His second poem was “A Sreetfighting Man in the Middle of Grover Square” and he explained that he was reading it because Bänoo encourages political poems. Hmm, I know she leans towards political poetry, but I’ve never heard her encourage it. From the political poem – “I went down to the demonstration … I was telling my therapist about it … two girls, like two ghosts … They stood as victims … a horse over a fallen body … a flurry of hooves … over her … Sure, they try to step on the sturdiest surface, not on a body … I never caught him … That’s an example of class interest … My ex-therapist thought that … was youthful posturing … I said what I thought I saw … Why indeed did I say, ‘trampled under hoof’? Why is she after my balls? I asked her why she denied death and blood outside her door … A short while before the police broke up the demonstration … what could a poor boy do but to play for a rock and roll band, cause in sleepy London town there’s just no place for a street fighting man.”

Ruby read – “To email or not to email in the vacant space of three months … my heart could not compete … The possibility of messaging you again … Places that felt like you in Toronto … I felt like I was peering into your summer childhood … vividly remembering you as a dusty ghost … A house with warm walls … Paintings of the freedom of the heart … A place that felt sacred … like walking on the soil of an Indian burial ground … You explored the music of everything ecstatic and yellow.”

As Bänoo was about to introduce the next open miker, Maggie Helwig, the minister for St Stephen in the Fields, came pushing a bike between the audience and the stage and called out, “Excuse me!” as she took the bike back towards the gym. Helwig is a very good writer but she only read on the open stage the first night Shab-e She’r was at the church. Since then she hasn’t even sat in the audience.

Jeff Cotrill read “How to Write for the Internet” – “The 73 most totally overrated things like ever … Citizen Kane … who cares? We know all along that Rosebud is a sled … 2. The Beatles … their music was so pretentious … especially Stairway to Heaven … 3. Pizza … gross with pineapples … 4. Europe … What a useless, dumb continent! Nobody speaks English right …  not even in England … Ad: Date Russian women with one leg … 47. Sleep … so boring … 48. Laundry … Boring and pointless … It’s just going to get dirty again … 49. Monty Python … Weird people doing things that don’t make sense … 72. Opposable thumbs … So overrated … not even real fingers …73.The Godfather … Never seen it but boring …”

Janeen Yusuf said she had a sore throat but would do her best to project. From her first poem – “You and I are like snow on needles … Your dense softness a magnet to my spine … snow on needles … only for a season.”

From Janeen’s second poem – “She who takes infinite forms will bond with you like a sister … She will invoke and inhale you through the blessings of her ancestors … A canvas in constant change … Open your eyes to more than form and learn to hear silence … I am guided to hear a soul sequence.”

From her third poem – “Potent scenes … softness shielded … a lover’s call unheeded … Spring where the silver river streams … Its essence nourished potent seeds … sprouting softness as supreme.”

Sydney White read a sequence of three poems. From the first – “You didn’t make us and then punish us for not being perfect … We made you in our image … You are never not…” From “No Thank You” – “I’ve been in churches and mosques … arguments, fisticuffs, wars … I have no interest in going to heaven. I know it’s empty.” From “Armageddon Outta Here” – “Putin retaliates … another cold war heating up … Get your iodine ready … Free speeches all die on a special ed planet … Kiss your apathetic ass goodbye.”

Homa explained that her name is that of a bird that brings luck when it flies. I looked this up and saw that it’s a mythical bird that never lands and flies so high that it’s invisible and it brings luck to anyone that is touched by its shadow. She told us that she would be reading in Persian because when she read about this event she assumed that everyone here would be speaking Persian and so she hadn’t bothered to translate it. He recounted that her poem was inspired by a Chinese film called “Iron Road” in which a girl poses as a boy and gets work helping to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. She becomes friends with the railroad construction contractor’s son and when she reveals her true gender to him they fall in love. The message of Homa’s poem is that a woman shouldn’t have to pose as a man to be accepted.

Bänoo explained that she called this event “Shab-e She’r” in order to draw Persians out into more than just Persian spaces.

It was now time for our first feature, Weeda Salehi Shareqi.

Weeda said, “Happy Nowruz! It’s summer in Persia.”

She told us that her first poem isn’t done yet and that it’s about women. She introduced it by saying, “I don’t want to go very deep because makes me upset … Muslim women are presented as weak objects … People want to hear about abused Muslim women … We have very strong women … Very independent … They don’t need men …”

From the first poem – “Women have loved long before I have loved … She dreams of a red rose tree, but the dearest rose is her … When they need to show the power, her laughter will make fire …”

Weeda’s second poem was “You, Me and Us” – “The world ignored it … trying not to spread the truth … Another holocaust … happening again and again … How much will I make today … tomorrow … We all have the cellphone … we do nothing … Innocents getting killed every second of every minute of every hour of every day but we just ignore it … The newspaper give them a different headline … They all give a different headline … and again we are silent … try not to spread the truth … Fingers are moving from right to left … Does the queen sleep at night? The leaders would walk to their speech, paper in their hand and fix their tie …”

From “Woman” – “I will rise … You might want to write me off … I will rise … as a woman … I’m not gonna let you make me history … I will rise with the moon and with the sun … With each love song that plays I will rise … I will rise with each spring morning, with each summer day … You can shoot me with your eyes, I will rise …”

Weeda clapped at the end of the poem and she did this for several of the pieces that she read. She asked with a smile, “Is it boring?”

From “Say Salaam” – “My name is immigrant … Her name is immigrant … Like so many others going around and around … There are so many of us: Muslims, aboriginals … black eyebrows, black hair … Women giving speech on woman abuse they have never experienced … If hate knocks on your heart, answer it with love. Do not put out welcome mat … Write love in empty pages … If hate says ‘god damn it’ answer ‘have a great day’ … If hate knocks on your heart and tells you of 9-11, tell them to have a great day … Sing them anthem of love.”

From “Let’s Vote” – “ … It’s me with my tired life, my old eyes and my weak body … I will walk the way to change the rules … Choose the king that we have always dreamed of … then we will fly the kites to celebrate freedom.”

Of “Sorrow” Weeda said, “It’s a little bit depressing but it’s a short one” – “We have seen it, lived it, know hoe it looks … Our heart welcomes more sadness … allowing our soul to bond with it … They all grow up in the place where hate changes to love …”

From Weeda’s last poem – “Think of us as a bird … one that’s hungry for love … Who wants to fly, to sing a song?”

Weeda Salehi Shareqi’s poetry reads like it was written in another language. I suspect that the basic meaning of each poem survives the translation to English but that the poetics of the original language are lost in the transformation. While each of her poems has a valuable message, none of them make for very good poems in English.

Instead of the usual break after the first feature, Bänoo immediately introduced the second invited poet, Jacob McArthur Mooney. Just before Jacob began to read, a young man came from the back of the church a bike with a back flat tire that was squeaking against the floor as he passed in front of the stage and then continued on to the exit.

Jacob informed us that he’d grown up in a church. I thought at first that he’d meant that he’d lived in a church that had been converted to a home, but he meant that he’d been an altar server in the Catholic Church.

While Weeda had stood just at the foot of the steps leading up to the stage, Jacob decided to read while standing right next to and almost touching me where I was sitting in the front row. This worried me slightly because he announced that he was just getting over a cold.

Jacob informed us that on the advice of his therapist he was trying to let go of control and so for almost every poem he had people in the audience call out page numbers for which poems he would read. He asked Norman to start things off and was given the number 13. The corresponding poem was “Creep by TLC is Better than Creep by Radiohead” – “ … I’m learning to walk backwards, to kiss the compulsions / in a sentence’s façade … Let it glow within the argument … I have grown / proper old. I can wet the bed for science … All plainspoken punditry / is dress shoes for your teeth …”

To introduce his second poem, Jacob let us know that Levittown, New York was the first suburb in the United States. From “At the Initial Settlement of Levittown” – “ … This is the room’s cultural echo … Here is the cool teacher … Here are demographic models … This is where the clichés / will have you fuck the other woman. These / are her torch songs for the shift in public morals … This is the small room … for all the novels that live in your novels.”

Jacob confessed that he had been a boy scout and informed us that the organization had been notably militaristic for the first twenty years of its existence. But Baden Powell felt guilty because of WWI. From “The Fever Dreamer” – “I have made the boys … cruel and handsome … like new carnivores … I’ve had my boys go post-European / and sew their pockets shut … made / and remade by boy … Want armament contracts … I have become my boys’ / sincerity … I will / wear them hats … You’ll taste how / I have egged them on … In their sucralose blood / of comeuppance … I’ve shown them to suckle on / the nearest teat to tongue … their badges and banners / torqued into hieroglyph … I apologize / to Europe for the invention of the boy … I have brokered boys / bankrolled their littleness and lust … built hives in their minds / freeing them of history …”

I think in calling out a number someone was clever and asked for the square root of 81, which Jacob said was 9 and added that he’d better be right because his wife is a math professor. He explained that the poem on page nine was inspired by Kennedy assassination videos and two characters that conspiracy theorists have identified: the babushka lady and the umbrella man. In Jacob’s poem “Babushka Lady to Umbrella Man” they are in love – “I have limp hair … I will give you / humid Dallas love and Dallas children / Step into my silo, darling. Let’s not let / these fêted Irish brains get between us / Pull off your soggy tie, and I’ll strip / the slick American shirt from your back … love is underlit, the rain cloud you carry / like a shawl …”

Jacob said that we almost live in a megalopolis. It was hard to hear him at that point because two older women that were sitting next to the gorgeous young woman on my right were chatting loudly as if they weren’t aware they were at a poetry reading.

From “Megalopolis” – “Only noted by the breaths of suburbs at their centres. / Surrounding highways, theirs is a giving up of self … Folk tales for the fill that reduces former freeways … The capitalism under which Quebec City is a frontier … Let dustbowls buff the backs of final billboards … the chat is post citizen …”

Jacob did a cover of “Some Men” by Troy Jollimore – “A man wakes up … and cries out, ‘Dammit, / I’m still me!’ … A priest, a rabbi / and a Zen Buddhist / live in different neighbourhoods / and never meet … A man wakes up / in America, filled / with joy at living / in this land of opportunity / where anyone, regardless / of class, race or religion / can grow up and / assassinate the president / A man puts a cat / in a box, connects / the box to a tube / that contains a toxic / substance, connects / the tube’s lid to / a mechanical arm / that is, in turn / hooked up to a computer / that monitors an isotope / that may or may not / decay in the next / twelve seconds. The cat’s name / is Simon …”

Jacob shared that the person who inspired his next poem recently passed away. He added that it is a pantoum. He didn’t explain what a pantoum is, so I will. The modern pantoum is composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line is often the same as the first. From “A Guide to Chord Progression” – “These mice are ancient … They see patterns that we don’t … They will need you to plough snow … death blurs the boundaries of our bodies.”

Jacob told us that he has a four year old named Oliver.

He finished with the title poem from his most recent book, “Don’t Be Interesting” – “My friends are sculpting down the major works of tiny canons … working on translations … … be bifurcated, um-tied. Go fog your rover self into looped repudiations, non-belief, anonymity and art … The book says that people are art … Know that you were born in Yorkville and this cannot be changed … When I sing of you I mean you … The semiolis of the beard is in disarray … Whatever you do, don’t be interesting … I may have gotten drunk and joined the Liberal party of Canada … There can be no gentle easing into spectacle … A gender neutral youth will not protect you …”

There are a couple of parallels between Jacob McArthur Mooney and David Byrne. The title of Mooney’s poem “Don’t Be Interesting” is similar to Byrne’s “Stop Making Sense” and both writers share an interest in cities and suburbs as subject matter. I wonder if these are coincidences or if Mooney is actually a Talking Heads fan and was influenced poetically by Byrne. Jacob has an interesting style of disjoining the intellect, using sounds and arrangements of words and phrases in decohesive ways in order to convey an elasticized point of view as if each part of a poem came from separate places and were connected later more like notes in a musical composition rather than attempting to produce a sensible narrative. The overall effect is similar to poetry derived from the cut up technique. It doesn’t always work Sometimes it trails into a desert of disinterest but hearing him read is like finding odd-shaped or shiny objects while beachcombing.

We took a break.

I went to the washroom again and stopped again on the way back to chat with Tom. I asked him if he was able to hear the poets read without the microphone. He said that he could if he focuses but he finds that a lot of readers don’t have a centre. He gave me the example of a guy last month that stated that there’s nothing worse than eating alone. Tom said he’d felt like shouting out, “What about starving?” I suggested that he probably didn’t mean that eating alone is the worst thing imaginable but was rather just trying to convey that he doesn’t like to eat alone.

Tom also shared a story that his father related to him from his childhood in Czechoslovakia. He said that women used to hug trees to leave messages for other women that would embrace the same tree later and pick up what had been communicated.

After the break, Bänoo invited Tom Smarda to kick off the second half of the open stage. Tom related to everyone about the days when I knew him in Vancouver and he had green hair. I remember that in those days Tom used send some of the money that he made from busking to support a foster child in Guatemala. At one point he left town with the intention of hitchhiking down to Central America to meet the kid, but somehow I don’t think he made it. It was on the way back through California that he hooked up with some punks that dyed his hair green. Tom said that he used to sing, “I hope your kids get cancer!” In response to people suggesting that he write something less offensive he wrote the song that he sang that night at Shab-e She’r – “Oh won’t you please sing something normal / something that we can all relate to … like streams dat dadah and geese dat dadah and bears and fishes and frogs datdadah … And if I was the prime minister, I’ll tell you what I’d do / I’d take all of your money, and I wouldn’t give none to you … like birds datdadah and metals datdadah and forests … And if I was the president, I tell ya what I’d do / I’d blow up this whole planet and I’d blame it all on you … And if I was normal I tell ya what I’d do / I’d sing something normal, but you know it wouldn’t be true … like salamanders and coral reefs and you datdadah.”

Iman announced that this was her second time at Shab-e She’r and that it was her second time reading poetry in public. Her poem was about her late father – “My own father as he gently slipped into the last good night … I still chant, ‘Father, please do not change …”

Her second poem was “Forms of Vanishing” – “When the cast of your molten lover dries … Dear world, I am two dimensional, you are three.”

Her third poem was “Untamed” – “Like a turtle, I never forget … Like a dinosaur, in the end I am fragile … Like green grass, this heart can be crushed.”

Jerome read “Partial” – “It is as if Dante opted out … his remaining days … his dreams would be stone and of an iron colour … I gambolled with a neighbour’s dog … Nothing resolved … I rooted in the brush the dream of a tongue licking an eyeball … When he took me to the graves it was too dark to read the names … We spent the night crushing air between our lips … I have cracked open that night and found a body there … I stepped on it … betrayal that burns … You are stumbling over every hungry edifice … The engine shudders … In a café in Kensington a Peruvian hustler knows all there is to know about art …”

Rula read “An Introduction to the World of Motherhood” – “Where do I come from … A congestion of fears … Self only birthed through the constitution of others … A solemn word that lives on a pedestal … I am the mother … yet to be a mother.”

I was the first person that night to perform on the stage. I read “The Death of John Stadig” – “ … Stadig used his bed to block the door of his cell. He removed the mattress, twisted off a ten-centimetre piece of wire from the web of springs and tried to scratch open his wrists. Upon that failing he ventured to drive the steel wire up his arm, perhaps thinking that if he could replace his veins with metal he could stand to live in prison. When this didn’t work he broke one of the lenses from his new eyeglasses and used the biggest piece to slash his left wrist in two places. Bright blood began to flow but too slowly and so he drove the broken spectacle deep into his throat, successfully slicing and severing his jugular vein … He was already in shock by the time the guards managed to force their way into his cell and he was dead within minutes.  John Stadig may have killed himself in Leavenworth, but he was murdered by Alcatraz.”

Hanan read “Washing Away the Patriarchy” – “ … Once her husband is finished, she grabs the knife, wipes it on her apron and plunges it deep into his chest … rolls up the sleeves of her nightgown … scrapes the oatmeal out of her bowl … marvelled at its elasticity … lathers a sponge … and scrubs until it glistens.”

From Jovan’s first poem – “It took a bottle of Jack to convince me to talk to you … Sometimes my social anxieties get the better of me … Can I buy you a drink?”

From his second – “So much time is spent watching faces fade away … You said you loved Star Wars just before talking through the whole movie …”

From his third – “I don’t have Netflix, so if the chill brings us into an awkward silence …”

Deb Wiles also went up onto the stage, but paced back and forth, and sometimes up and down a step as she informed us that she has published four books of poetry, plus a cookbook and she is a Buddhist. She told us that her poem had been inspired by “The Naked Ape” by Desmond Morris. It had been a revelation for her to find out that human beings are apes. “So I’m a monkey / on a planet / Is there anything else to do / but hold on?”

Zohra read “Time” – “They say time heals all wounds … What I’ve wasted on you is much grander than time will ever be … My drum beats faster … Tell me how to count higher than ten … how I can recover each heartbeat I miss when I think of you …”

From Elisha’s poem – “I have access to the branches … only three feet away … Icicle tears … I see a cage … Where are the shadows coming from … I am wearing your clothes … Have a talk with my creature … Will the key fit or am I just a fob …”

Madeh played a drum that I think is called a “daf”. It’s a disk shaped Middle Eastern frame drum that at first I thought had small particles shaking inside of it but from what I’ve read that shaking effect is produced by metal ringlets that play against the skin of the drum while it is being beaten. He played while singing a poem by Rumi – “Spring of souls, come to dance …”

The last poet on the list was Laura de Leon but she had intended to recite her poems with the help of a musical accompanist who’d stepped outside. She went to get him.

Bänoo came to the front to occupy the audience while we waited. She told us that unlike most Iranians she doesn’t think she is better than everybody else. She said, “I think we’re pretty great” but added that Iranians should be more open to and interested in people from outside of their culture.

Norman asked Bänoo to explain her scarf, which was decorated with Persian writing. She took it off to look at it and said that it’s a line from the poet, Hafez – “I tried a thousand times on this path of love to attract you / to make you the light of my insomniac memory …” Someone said he’d heard that Hafez was Rumi’s disobedient (or mischievous?) brother. Bänoo said that Hafiz was a bit more graceful than Rumi.

It seems that Laura de Leon’s accompanist went home and so she just recited three poems without music. The first was “For the Ethereal” – “Come forth from the darkness oh angel of the night … The inner voice beckons on the wings of sonnets and prayers … There will be peace in the next world as promised.”

From “Divine Magnitude” – “Perceptibility does not escape … The great expanse in time forever unforgiven … forlorn flowers …”

From “Fragile Witness” – “Upward motion cherubim … The sky above between life and death … Other worlds emerge.”

The musical feature was Nawras Nader, who wore a baby blue suit with a black shirt and played a lutelike Middle eastern stringed instrument that I think is called an “oud”. He did a few instrumental pieces and then he asked us, “You enjoy?” Then he sang some songs perhaps in Arabic. One of them was over 100 years old by someone that didn’t get famous, about working hard and being poor but happy.

Bänoo closed the event with what she said was a traditional prayer for the turning of the New Year. She recited it in Arabic, Persian and finally in English – “You who turn eyes and hearts / You who direct days and nights / You who transform conditions / may you transform ours to the best.”

Tom asked what year it is and she said 1397.

On the way out I stopped to chat with Cy. He was curious about John Stadig, the guy in my story. I told him that he had been my mother’s first cousin but no one in the family had ever mentioned him. I heard about him when I was doing genealogical research and came across a book by Darrel McBreairty called “Alcatraz Eel”. He was a legend in northern Maine and northern New Brunswick but the family seems to have been ashamed to talk about him until the book was published. I told him that John Stadig had been a mechanical genius as had been several members of the Stadig family. My great grandfather, Lars Stadig had built the first pair of Swedish rift skis in North America. I explained that one was shorter than the other for steering but Cy found that puzzling and wondered how a shorter ski would assist a skier in turning in either direction. I didn’t know. The only thing I can think of is that maybe one lifted the longer ski and turned the shorter one in either direction to steer.

When I got home I had a late dinner and watched an Alfred Hitchcock Hour teleplay called “How to Get Rid of Your Wife” starring Bob Newhart as a man named Gerald with a nasty wife named Edith who is always nagging him. He asks her for a divorce but she refuses. He finds out that she has thrown out his beloved fishing equipment and so he calmly declares, “I’m just going to have to get rid of you.” The next day she sees him digging a grave-shaped and sized hole in the back yard. He makes sure that he does everything in full view and earshot of the neighbours, who hear him nagging him about the hole and telling him to fill it in. He tells her that it’s for a fishpond. Finally she says he can dig the hole but it’s because she believes he’s planning to kill her. Her suspicions are further pushed when he buys some poison for the garden and then insists that they switch roles in the kitchen. From now on he wants to do the cooking and she can do the dishes. She sees him holding a knife sometimes with a certain look on his face. She tells her sister and her brother in law that Gerald is trying to kill her but they suggest she go into a psychiatric residence for a little while. Gerald goes to a pet store to buy some rats. The quirky pet shop honour is played by Ann Guilbert who played Millie Helper on the Dick Van Dyke Show. He wants the kinds of rats that don’t look like pets, so she sells him two less attractive ones. He lets them loose in the house. When Edith finds them she screams and goes out to buy rat poison. Gerald also leaves lying around the signed photograph of a local burlesque dancer named Rosie Feathers. Convinced that Gerald is going to kill her so he can be with Rosie she decides to kill him first. She makes him a cup of cocoa with rat poison. He doesn’t drink it but goes to sleep or at least pretends to. Edith calls the cops to tell them her husband has poisoned himself. She shows them a note that he wrote to her about leaving her but it could be construed as a suicide note. But when the cops enter the bedroom Gerald wakes up and wonders what’s going on. Edith is charged with attempted murder. Several people appear in court to testify that Edith’s behaviour had been very suspicious and she is finally sent to prison. Gerald goes to see Rosie Feathers and arranges to take her to dinner but as he is leaving the club he is accosted by the pet shop owner who recognized his picture in the paper and thought it was curious that he hadn’t mentioned the rats he had bought from her. She blackmails him, not for money but rather for a relationship and so he once again is stuck with an unattractive and overbearing woman. He takes one last look at Rosie’s picture at the front of the club and sadly walks off with the homely woman.