Food Bank Adventures: Taking Holy Communion at Mass Psychosis

            On Saturday morning I forgot that I’d already done my yogic leg raising exercises and did some of them twice. I’d forgotten because my mind was occupied with remembering that Albert Moritz has forgotten about me. In December I had sent him the revisions I’d made of my book of poems, based on the critiques he'd made last summer. He had told me that he'd have time for them over the Christmas holidays but when the end of April came I still hadn't heard from him. I emailed a reminder and he said that he wouldn’t be able to look at my book until May or June at the latest, but now at the end of August I still haven’t heard from him. I assume that he's forgotten because he’s a nice guy and I’m pretty sure that if it was on his mind he would drop my a line to let me know that he’s still tapped for time. I know that as the Poet Laureate of Toronto he has a lot on his plate but it feels lousy to be forgettable.

I memorized the second verse of “Joujou a la casse" (Dolly to the Trash) by Serge Gainsbourg and then spent some time reworking my translation. Often my initial translations are done before bedtime when I don’t have the brain power left to do anything else. But once I begin singing a song I tend to get a better idea what it’s about.

During song practice I was a little depressed because I was thinking about how hard I work on these songs but then when I make videos of them and upload them to YouTube they hardly get any hits. One would think that out of ninety-six Facebook friends and twenty-one Twitter followers an amount more than zero of them would watch my videos.

At 9:35 I headed for the food bank. As I was unlocking my door I saw my neighbour Shankar locking his. I told him that I’d run into our mutual friend Tom Fisher at the Beer Store two days before. Tom hadn’t known that we live in the same building. I shared with Shankar that Tom said he’s a very nice guy but I joked that I’d set Tom straight about that and told him what an evil person he really is. Shankar just smiled and nodded so he might have zoned out from my western humour.

Beth was there when I arrived, wearing a slicker and all ready for the rain that didn’t fall after all. When she saw me she said, “There’s my favourite person!" After I’d locked my bike and walked up to the orange pastel heart behind Beth she told me that she’d saved me a spot, but I hadn’t noticed anyone else trying to get it.

Beth reacted frantically a few times to wasps that were flying nearby. She said that she’s allergic to bee stings and doesn't know if she's allergic to wasp stings but doesn't want to find out. I commented that they are all drunk this time of year because of the rotten fruit that’s hanging around.

Beth said that they say that a lot of crazy people are going to die young. It’s true that people with severe forms of mental illness live on average twenty years less than the general population but not all for the same reasons. Some don’t get enough exercise; some have problems negotiating the process of looking for medical help; some self medicate with drugs and cigarettes; and some gain too much weight as a side effect of taking certain prescribed psychiatric medications. 

I said it also depends on what we mean by “crazy”. Most people believe in god and if it turns out that there is no supreme being then it means that the majority of people now and throughout history have suffered from delusion, which is the main feature of psychosis. But even the people that believe with certainty that there is no god are also delusional because they are sure of something they cannot know. A considerable portion of the foundation of our society was shaped by the actions of people motivated by their belief in god. Therefore civilization itself may to a great extent be the result of mass psychosis.

I pointed out that since humans are animals we repress hundreds of animal instincts in order to get along with one another in society. The necessary process of holding our instincts down can’t help but cause us to be dysfunctional.

Beth was admiring a pigeon on the sidewalk and said she liked the way they bob their heads when they walk. Apparently they do this in order to see where they are going in relation to the motion of their surroundings. The head moves forward, the body catches up and then the head moves forward again and so on. The whole process looks like bobbing. Humans do the same thing but without moving our heads because we use rapid eye movement instead.

I told her I prefer crows because they are smarter and more interesting. I said that crows have been shown to be able to make tools in order to solve problems while no dog or cat has ever made a tool. Crows placed in situations where they needed to get food out of holes have bent wires to make hooks in order to grab the food. I also find their mimicking talents to be a sign of intelligence. Crows have been observed, when they come upon a dead animal that they can’t tear open, to imitate the calls of coyotes in order to bring them to the corpse to open it up for them.

Beth argued that pigeons are also smart but I said that there’s a difference between being sensitive to and adapting to a human environment and having the ability to work out problems. Studies have shown that as birds go pigeons and doves are not very bright. She told me that she saw on TV that pigeons can detect cancer. I asked if she was talking about trained pigeons but she said no. I looked it up and found that pigeons can detect cancer but that it is the result of being taught how to do it. But what pigeons can learn to do is distinguish cancer by looking at microscopic images. They can’t play the role of a cancer sniffing dog and find cancer in a person.

Beth told me that she thinks I’m a really great person. I said that it was very nice of her to say so. Later when the guy came with the clipboard to take our names and membership numbers he asked if my name was spelled with a “C" or  "K". I said “It's C, the same as the religion” but it didn’t occur to me until later that in some languages the religion is spelled with a "K".

Beth said, “You rock" and "You're awesome!” If only people I'm attracted to would talk to me that way. She declared she likes me because we have a lot in common. We’re both creative people. She said that she writes poetry too. She added that she likes to draw and make cakes. She told me that she’s creative with cooking and described a dish that she makes with shellfish. She said that she has an idea that she’d like to try, which is to combine shrimp with macaroni and cheese. I pointed out that people tend not to combine shellfish with cheese, although they do dip it in butter. Other than the tuna melt people there’s no common dish that combines cheese and fish. Italians traditionally never combine cheese and fish and although in North America one would find anchovies and cheese together on pizza, the original Italian anchovy pizza did not have cheese on it. The French make an exception with lobster thermidor which contains gruyere cheese but it's pretty hard to taste the lobster when it's overpowered by the cheese. For it to work the cheese has to be mild and the fish has to be enhanced in some way as is the case for a bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese.  However, there seem to be as many shrimp with macaroni and cheese recipes online as there are shrimp in the ocean. I asked Beth to let me know how it tastes if she ever tries it.

A man came down the line handing out bags containing various fruits and vegetables. Mine contained three bananas; four small peaches; one straightneck squash; three and a half cucumbers; and three potatoes. Beth asked me if I wanted her bananas but I could see that hers were as rotten as mine. I commented that I’d probably be able to cut one little edible piece of one of my bananas and the rest would go in the garbage. The woman in front of Beth turned and nodded in agreement.

Beth got her crate before me and coincidentally one of her items was a frozen macaroni and cheese meal. I said, “There ya go! Just add shrimp!" For Beth this was further evidence that she's psychic but macaroni and cheese is not an uncommon item to receive at the food bank. I would have been more impressed with her prophetic prowess if we’d been discussing fettuccini alfredo with shrimp and that had shown up in her crate.

The guy behind me said “Move up!” because now that some people ahead had gotten their food there were empty spaces in the line. I stepped ahead a few hearts. There was one more designated space free but it was the skewed one on the other side of the sidewalk. The guy behind urged me to move further but I told him I was going to stay where I was. I pointed out that he was going to get his food anyway and asked, “Why should we move up?” He answered, "So he doesn't have to walk as far." The guy that brought me my crate overheard that and said, “I appreciate that! Thank you!" First of all when people move up they tend to throw social distancing out the window and end up standing next to the people that are sorting through their food. Secondly it’s not that long a walk and thirdly, what happened to the cart that they’d used on previous occasions to carry several crates at once? It seems to me that it makes more sense for the clients to stay on their spots and to sort their food there as well.

I kept the box containing two packets of “beefy onion recipe soup and dip mix". On the side of the box there are instructions for making the soup but none for the dip, although there was plenty of space for them to print it. I assume that the recipe is the same for onion dip made out of onion soup mix, which is to just add sour cream, but it seems to me that if one is going to put the words “soup" and "dip" equally on the name of a product one should provide instructions for both. If one goes on the Lipton website the recipe is not readily available there either. It might be there somewhere but I got tired of digging after four pages. The site is more buyer greedy than customer friendly.

I took two individually packaged chocolate chip cookies; a can of Sprite; a bag of milk; a bag of six eggs; two small containers of fruit bottom yogourt; a little container of fruit salad; one bagel; and a bag of six organic whole wheat bagels. I also got the same box of frozen macaroni and white cheddar with bacon that Beth got, although I won’t be adding shrimp.

The final item that I accepted was another bag of face masks but a different kind than before and there were six this time instead of five. The brand is called “Mad Engine”. At first sight they were more interesting than the previous masks because there was more than one colour. But on closer inspection they are just as ugly as the blue ones we got and they seem to be made from recycled material because some of them have faded printing with only parts of words. The two white ones have some part of a faded orange, red and blue pattern but in the white part of one there is part of a word that ends with “user-Busche”. The other white mask has a little more and reads “euser-Busche” and when I saw that I realized the complete word has to be “Anheuser-Busche”, the company that makes the pissy tasting US beer Budweiser. The grey masks have on one the letters “DA” and the other has part of another letter plus “EL”, both large and in very faded black. I might wear masks with printing while sanding plaster in my bedroom but I wouldn’t be caught dead with them on my face in public. The other two masks were just blue and there’s more of a possibility that I’d wear them around people. After saying that however I noticed that one of the blue masks has three tiny little red stains that look a lot like blood that didn’t wash off completely. So of the six masks I would only wear one of them in public. Mad Engine is an apparel manufacturing company that makes clothes for various brand names including Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Walmart. I assume they make t-shirts for Anheuser Busche as well since it looks like they made these masks from leftover product material. Their headquarters is in San Diego but they have branches all over the world, including Toronto. The masks are part of a recently formed charity branch of the company called “One Million Masks”.

I put what I didn’t want back in my crate and walked back down to Beth to offer it to her. She took the box of sugary cereal; the bag of rice; the gummy candies; and the pack of little chocolate chip muffins. I found someone else to take my pack of tofu and my can of corn kernels.

The only meat given this time was the little bit of bacon that came with the macaroni and cheese. There was no fruit besides the overripe bananas and the only green vegetables were the not so fresh cucumber. I give this week at the food bank a C-minus.

I took my food home to put it away and then headed out to the supermarket. At No Frills I got one bag of grapes; two bags of cherries; a pint of blueberries; a plastic basket of peaches; a sirloin steak; mouthwash; orange juice and a container of Greek yogourt. I also bought a tin of coffee even though I already had a full one at home. On Thursday I’d bought a can of Melitta and found it disgusting and so this time I got Maxwell House. I’ll save the Melitta for emergencies.

For lunch I had the rest of my cheddar cheese with Ritz crackers.

I spent most of the afternoon working on writing my Food Bank Adventure.

I saw a mouse in my apartment for the first time in more than twenty years. That’s not entirely true since the cats used to bring them in to hunt and kill, but it was definitely the first unharrassed mouse I’d seen in all these years. I saw it sneak into my bedroom from behind the electric guitar. Later it came back out the same way and ran under the tall bookshelf. I poked around under there with a meter stick but maybe it had already gone someplace else.

That night I had a fried egg and a sliced and toasted focaccia triangle while watching two episodes of The Adventures of William Tell.

In the first story the young Stefan is bringing food to the Bear from the village to give to Tell for feeding the resistance fighters. But suddenly they are ambushed by Austrian soldiers. Stefan hides but the Bear is captured and taken away. When Stefan informs Tell of this he says that the soldiers must have followed him. But Tell’s man Hans casts suspicion on Stefan because he has been seen visiting the castle of the Austrian General Bellanger. That night they follow Stefan and see him build a fire to signal Castle Bellanger. Someone inside waves a white handkerchief and lowers a rope which Stefan climbs into the arms of Bellanger’s daughter Maria. One of the soldiers sees this and tells the general. Tell follows Stefan and finds to his surprise that the Bear has been imprisoned there. He takes out two guards but has no time to free the Bear because more guards have been alerted. Both Tell and Stefan escape. Gessler happens to be visiting the general and sees Stefan’s relationship with Maria as the key to capturing Tell. They decide to use Maria as bait to lure Stefan there and so the general lies to her that he approves of their romance. Tell asks Stefan to help him get back into the castle so he can rescue the Bear. The next night Maria innocently escorts Stefan to her father only to see him seized by soldiers and to realize that her father lied to her. Meanwhile Tell is able to climb up and work open the Bear’s cell door. When two guards come in Tell and the Bear take them out. Tell has overheard that Stefan has been captured and so he goes first to Maria to get her help to rescue Stefan. Tell then walks boldly in on Gessler and Bellanger while Stefan is being tortured. Tell informs them that they’d better let himself and Stefan go free if Bellanger wants to see his daughter again and then tells him to look out the window, He sees Maria walking away from the castle with the bear towards a troop of resistance fighters at the edge of the woods. Gessler protests but Bellanger reminds him that Maria is betrothed to a kinsman of the emperor. An exchange is arranged but Maria wants to stay with Stefan. Tell insists that she must go back because of Tell gave his word. But while Maria is walking towards the castle, archers on the wall open fire at Tell. She runs back to take shelter with them behind a rock and says that since her father broke his word to Tell she does not have to go back. Resistance fighters move forward behind uprooted bushes to camouflage them and they escape to the woods.

In the second story Tell takes his son Walter on what was supposed to be a peaceful mission to deliver some swords. But when Austrian soldiers stop them they find the weapons and they have to run. They escape into the mountains and hide under a cliff. But then they are attacked by a resistance fighter named Hans who thinks they are Austrian spies. When Tell finally beats Hans, with the help of Walter biting his leg, they are captured by Hans’s comrades and taken to their camp. They won’t believe he’s William Tell unless he shows them what a great archer he is and so he throws an apple into the air in front of a target and not only pierces the apple but hits the bull’s-eye with the same arrow. After they are all friends tell notices that these men train with only wooden swords and so he plots to raid Castle Schwartzburg nearby for its store of weapons. The first thing that Tell needs to do is scout the inside of the castle and so he and Hans find a troop of Austrian soldiers marching, take out the last two and steal their uniforms. Disguised as soldiers they are able to walk into the castle. Tell measures the height of the wall and locates the armoury. In a bedroom adjacent to the armoury he determines that the wall could be broken through from that chamber. But by coincidence Gessler is visiting the castle and that is his bedroom. When he walks in he finds Tell and they draw swords. Gessler calls for the guard but it’s Hans who walks in and knocks him out. They fight their way to the wall and jump into the moat. They practice and plan and then the night of the raid they hoist Walter on a pole to the top of the wall where he ties a rope and then climbs back down. The men climb the rope and use the pole to walk across to the castle. They cut through the castle roof down into Gessler’s room and bind and gag him. They cut through the wall into the armoury and steal the weapons. They throw the weapons over the wall and Tell closes the portcullis so the soldiers can’t get out right away and then Tell goes over the wall.

Tell sure did put his son in a lot of danger. It’s more child abuse than Batman did to Robin.