On Saturday morning I memorized the first
verse of “Bourrée de complexes" (Buried in Complexes) by Boris Vian.
I
made a third video recording of my daily song practice. I always face the
window looking south down onto Queen Street when I play but on the video
playback I’ve noticed that the light seems too even. I think that for the next
session I’ll try shooting myself facing east to create some shadow and perhaps
that would make my performance more visually interesting. That way I would also
be facing the big mirror and I could see whether I’m looking friendly enough.
I
still get nervous while making videos of myself and even though I have full
control over whether anybody sees the final result I still feel as if I’m being
watched. Maybe it’s because I know that I'm a harsh critic and I'm afraid of my
own judgement. It's weird though that when the camera battery runs out and the
computer voice recorder keeps on going that I don’t feel the same nervousness.
Maybe, using Marshal McLuhan’s language it’s because the voice recording is a
hot medium and therefore not interactive, whereas a viewer adds information to
a cool medium like a video recording. I don't know. Hopefully I'll relax more
as I continue with this project.
At
9:45 I went to the food bank wearing shorts and sandals for the first time this
year. When I got there I noticed that a couple of items had already been given
out. Marlena told me I could help myself to a box containing bunches of
asparagus and I could take three or four. I grabbed three but saw right away
that most of the tips had gone bad. When I sorted through them later I threw
away two thirds of them and ended up with one bunch.
My
spot in the line was the blue heart at the end.
The
guy in front of me asked if I’d gotten some asparagus and commented that it's
hard to grow. I told him that I saw it growing wild when I was down in West
Virginia and that wild asparagus is delicious raw.
A
volunteer came around with more of the other item that had been handed out
earlier. It was a “Deluxe deli tray" by Hormel, containing two packs of
round crackers, olives, salami, pepperoni, marble cheese and pepper jack
cheese. Hormel started out in Minnesota in the late 19th Century as a meat
seller. In 1926 they produced the first canned ham and in 1937 they invented
Spam. In 1959 Hormel was the first meat packer to receive the seal of approval
of the American Humane Society for anaesthetizing animals before slaughter.
Marlena
came down the line giving out bags of buns, but I skipped those.
The
other volunteer came back with bags containing two heads of leaf lettuce, three
small onions, three tomatoes, two golden russet pears, a seedless cucumber and
two lemons.
The
guy in front of me said he really liked the PC gift cards that they’ve been
giving out. He thought that PC stood for "Price Chopper”. I informed him
that PC means “President’s Choice” and that Price Chopper is what became
Freshco a few years ago.
He
told me that last week he was asked if he wanted one or two boxes and he said
he’d take two. They gave one PC card worth $10 with each box. He said that one
woman asked for four boxes and got four cards. It had been my impression that
when they asked if we wanted one box or more it meant were we shopping for just
one or more people, such as a partner or a whole family. I would be
uncomfortable asking for more than one box since I live alone, and also because
there is so much that I don’t want in the boxes that I’d have to work twice as
hard giving it away.
The
wait for the boxes was less than half an hour and this time there
were no taped up boxes but rather open milk cartons and other plastic
containers. Mine was a white container about the size of a litter box but I
kept very little of its contents. I held on to the half litre of milk, the
three eggs, the can of tuna, the tin of evaporated milk, the can of black beans
and the other of baked beans with bacon and maple. I put those in my backpack
and filled the container back up with the carton of Cheerios, the box of pasta,
the can of chopped tomatoes, the jar of sugared peanut butter, the tin of corn
and the big bag of biscotti. I asked Billy if he wanted any of it but he didn’t
and so I walked down the line and gave it all to the elderly woman from east
Asia who'd been told earlier that she couldn’t shop this time because she’d
already been there on Wednesday.
I
asked Marlena if they’d be giving out PC cards but she said they didn't have
any more of those.
Just
as I was unlocking my bike I heard that they were giving out juice and so I
waited. A volunteer with a lit cigarette dangling out of his mouth came and
gave me six 355 ml bottles of Tropicana natural orange juice.
I
took my food home to put away. It took me fifteen minutes to sort through the
asparagus. I stood all of the unrotten spears in water so they would last
longer but figured I'd better steam them all that night if I didn’t want my
efforts to be wasted.
I
headed for the supermarket. Because I bought the new guitar early in the month
I’ve run low on money a lot sooner than usual. At No Frills there was a line-up
of about ten people for the first time in a few weeks. The cherries were very
cheap at $4 a kilo and so I got two bags, but weighed them so I knew what I’d
be paying. I only had $31.80 in my pocket and $27.00 in the bank and so for the
first time in a long time I had to add up the prices of the items I selected. I
didn’t try to work out the tax but I rounded everything up to the nearest
dollar or half dollar. I grabbed mouthwash, a pack of PC toilet paper and two
containers of Greek yogourt. The bill came out to $31.79.
I
had a cheddar, tomato and cucumber sandwich for lunch.
In
the afternoon I started writing about my Food Bank Adventure.
That
night I had a fried egg and a piece of toast with a beer while watching
“Doomsday”, which is episode twelve of the 1957 Alfred Hitchcock produced TV
series Suspicion. Eddie Schumacher is a master bank robber who has never been
caught. He credits his success to the fact that no one knows his true identity
and that he never uses the same crew twice, except for his second in command,
Jim, in whom he can be assured of total loyalty because he keeps him from going
to prison for murder. Everyone knows Schumacher as Mack McDillard, a Texas rancher,
and he really does have a ranch in Texas where he relaxes and plans perfect
robberies. His most recent plan is to knock over a small town bank for just
under a million dollars. But when he meets the men that Jim hired he discovers
that one of them knows his real name. Mack takes the man to the a cliff
overlooking the ocean at gunpoint and asks if he can forget his true identity.
He says he can but then fifteen seconds alter he slips and calls him “Shoes” so
Mack kills him. Mack rents a room across from the bank where in the next room
two Portuguese fishermen are continuously arguing. Outside two members of his
team have jobs working jackhammers. Posing as an insurance inspector Mack goes
into the bank and disables the alarm. The robbery goes off without a hitch but
while leaving the bank with the money, Mack is shot by an unseen gunman. While
Jim is taking Mack to a discreet doctor in a stolen ambulance, they hear on the
radio that the bullet that hit Mack came from a Portuguese fisherman in a hotel
room. He had missed the man he had been aiming at and the bullet had gone
through the window to hit Mack. Mack sees this news has having made his entire
life nothing but a joke. He dies in the ambulance.
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