Our Language Is Richest Around The Forbidden Topics

            

           

            I sighed through the first parts of early Saturday morning, especially my yoga. I was okay, as usual after the singing part though.

            I received an email from K.J. Mullins telling me that she’d published my article about my trip to the food bank and my failed attempt to get enough money to buy a battery for my guitar tuner. She surprised me though when she told me she’d sent me twenty dollars by email transfer so I could get the battery. That was a very nice thing for her to do! She explained, “Music deserves to live.” It’s a good thing she’s never heard me play.

            I was thinking some more about why there are more words for homosexual than there are for heterosexual. I did a search for the word with the most synonyms and found that, hands down, the winner is “drunk”. I would expect that “prostitute” would have a lot of words to represent it as well. There seems to be an ironic tendency for us to come up with so many words to use as a way of avoiding talking about forbidden topics that those topics become rich with language.

            I rode up to St Clair and Yonge and then went further east to finish exploring all the streets south of Mt Pleasant Cemetery. On my return trip I went down Yonge to Queen.

            Yonge Street is such an ugly street, pretty much no matter what section of Toronto it cuts through. Every now and then there is a nice building, but it’s surrounded by such a jumble of architectural crap that it looks like it was all thrown together.

            At Queen I went to the bank machine and took out the twenty dollars that K.J. sent me. I cycled west on Queen and parked my bike in front of the Rex. There was a funk band playing there as I went in to pee. The Rex is a great place to use the washroom, at least for a man, because it’s a short distance from the entrance and it’s at street level.

            I went to the nearby variety store but they didn’t have the battery I needed. The next convenience store east didn’t have it either, but Shoppers did, even though I had to go to the second floor and explore every section before stumbling upon the batteries.

            I watched an episode of Bonanza in which Hoss befriends a man that’s as strong as he is but who is also mentally challenged and plagued by fits of violent anger. Hoss’s efforts to keep Arnie in a peaceful environment are hampered by the manipulations of a saloon girl and her boss (played by Leonard Nimoy). It doesn’t end well for Arnie, since he kills the girl after she laughs at him. The opening of the story is funny though because Hoss and Arnie have a fistfight that lasts for an hour and a half, while Adam and Little Joe sit out on the street with mugs of beer and watch.

Fashionable Niqab

       On Friday morning I had an appointment with my social worker. When one checks in at the reception desk one receives an electronic paging device with a screen. When your worker is ready for you it beeps and the screen displays the number of the booth where one has to direct oneself. I wonder how much money they spent on that system and how much they think they would save from the extra two minutes it would take for the worker to just walk out and say, “Mr Christian? It’s nice to see you! Let’s go talk in booth 13!” I told the receptionist that those pagers are the stupidest idea they’ve ever had, She said, “I agree with you one hundred percent!”

       I asked my worker for some extra money to buy a bedbug cover for the futon on my couch, since I see bedbugs there sometimes. She said that I’d have to put my request in the form of a letter that says how much I need and what I need it for. I wonder how long such a cover would last with my cats going on it though.

       I also asked her why they have such an expensive paper wasting system. About a year ago they started sending out, on a monthly basis, two forms on legal size paper, each of which are blank on one side. The forms used to be printed on both sides of a letter size page. One of the forms is a change of information form, which I never need to fill out, and so it becomes a wasted piece of paper, other than scrap for me to write on. I suggested that they have an online option, which would save them tens of thousands of dollars. She said she has no idea why they brought in the paper wasting system, but she told me that there is a plan in the works, though it will be several years down the road, to move to an online system.

       That evening, as I was riding up Brock Avenue, there was an orange tabby cat standing on the road, just off the sidewalk, whipping it’s tail indecisively while it gazed down the driveway to the beer store. There was an electric scooter leaving the Beer Store, so maybe the feline was waiting for it to leave so it could head behind the building and look for mice that have been living off spilled beer from broken bottles.

       Just south of Dundas there was a woman standing with arms folded, looking down at a man who was sitting on the sidewalk and looking up at her. His face had a crying expression, though I didn’t see any tears, as he said to her, “Do you think I’m happy?”

       I rode to Yonge and St Clair and then further east to explore the streets from St Clair to Heath and between Inglewood and Mt Pleasant. All the streets have these little concrete barriers that causes east-west streets to zig or zag north and south and north-south streets to do the same to the east and west.

       For the first time in four bike rides I didn’t have to pee before leaving that area. I rode down Yonge to Bloor and headed west. I walked across to the south east corner of Queens Park and Bloor, and I was crossing to the west side while a Muslim couple were crossing with their two children. They were fairly young but it looked like they were wealthy. The woman was wearing a niqab that covered everything but her eyes but it seemed to be made of or covered with dark lace, rather than just the usual black cloth. Their two little girls were not yet of an age when they would need to cover their faces and so they were decked out in bright, colourful, expensive little girl dresses and both had big pink bows in their hair. I would think that a woman with a strong aesthetic who is compelled by her culture to cover up her face would probably, in a fashion sense, live vicariously through her children for as long she can. All I could see were her eyes, but I think I detected her eyes smiling with pleasure as I looked at her.

       After I got home, I got a call from someone doing a survey relating to the election. I told her that I’ve been voting Green for the last few decades but the last time I voted Liberal it was for Pierre Elliot Trudeau, so out of nostalgia I might vote Liberal this time around. She asked if I thought that the other candidates were all competent politicians. I said that as politicians go they are all competent, including Stephen Harper. To me it’s more a matter of being interesting than competent. 

       I looked out my window and there were four cops questioning and searching a middle aged guy of East Indian descent. I think I recognized the guy as being from the Caribbean, perhaps Guyana, and being a bit of a drunk. I don’t know what he did, if anything, to warrant the hassle, but that’s a lot of cops being paid good tax money to waste their time on one obnoxious drunk. I watched them for a while through my binoculars. The cops were the kind with the more casual uniform one sees a lot of these days. There were three men and one woman, all in black with baseball caps and the word police written across the back of their t-shirts. One of them had a shaved head and would often take off his cap for a second before placing it back on his dome. After they let the guy go they all piled into a little unmarked vehicle and drove off.

       I watched an interesting episode of Bonanza, starring Stella Stevens as a deaf and dumb girl who Joe takes it upon himself to teach sign language, against resistance at first from her father. The episode was directed by Robert Altman.

What Does It Really Mean That We Have So Many Words For Gay And So Few For Straight?

      

      
       It was very humid on Thursday morning and I was sweating like crazy while I did my yoga. When I was playing guitar it was strange that it stayed in tune better than usual. It seems that my guitar likes a certain steady high level of humidity but goes out of whack over or above it. I wonder if that has anything to do with it being made in Indonesia.

       It was one of those days that I really didn’t want to take a bike ride and was hoping for rain. It didn’t look like rain at all though when I started out but as I was climbing Dufferin to St Clair there was a shroud of black approaching from the west that I was certain was carrying rain. I was pretty sure that I was going to get caught in a shower but it didn’t happen. I explored the streets that run north off St Clair between Yonge and Inglewood.

       I stopped to pee at Jesters and in the washroom there was a heart drawn on the wall under which was the word “poof”. It made me think how many words there are for homosexual and how few there are for heterosexual. It has been claimed that the Inuit have fifty words for snow because obviously snow is important to them. Apparently this is a myth because it could actually be claimed that English has just as many words for snow if we think of English in terms of root words and how they are combined to make “snow storm”, “snow drift”, etcetera. But we actually have many distinctive names for Gay and very few for straight. All that comes to my mind are the words “het” and “breeder”. If that implies the importance of something then it would suggest that our society must unconsciously place great importance on homosexuality in order to have so many words for it.

       The ride down Yonge wasn’t as much fun as the last time because the lights interrupted my free descent.

       The superintendent came to tell me that the scheduled bedbug treatment that was supposed to happen on Friday has been cancelled. Apparently, even though I’d told my landlord that I wanted Orkin to come, he had hired the other guy anyway and he cancelled because he decided to take a trip to the States. Raja called Orkin, but they can’t come till Tuesday, so that means that even though I called Raja specifically12 days after the last spraying so that I could get a treatment at the proper time of two weeks since the last one, now it will have been a month between treatments. I can’t catch a break. I wish the landlord would just get a contract with an exterminator who I can call myself. Then I would do it every two weeks till they were gone. He just doesn’t seem to realize that one month allows them to rebuild their population so that the previous treatments are rendered useless.

Do Potholes Lead To Another Universe?

      

       When I arrived at the food bank on Wednesday there were two volunteers smoking in the doorway near a little girl. It seemed like a big line up and I was thinking to myself that maybe I should push myself to get down there before eleven. One of the volunteers was telling someone that he learned how to manage things because he had four sisters and he was the oldest so he did all the work while they just sat around. I ended up with number 14, which is the lowest number I’ve gotten so far.

      Afterward I went to the Bank of Montreal because I thought I had seven dollars of available funds and because I wanted to buy a battery for my guitar tuner, which is starting to fade out. It takes a while to warm up when I turn it on and it’s harder to see the display. There was no line up at the bank, but my pin number didn’t work. I’d gotten a new card the day before because the old one was starting to get rejected by some machines, but at the branch where I got it the manager had confirmed for me that my pin was already on it. It turned out that it was a new pin and that I had to change back to my old one. There wasn’t enough in my bank account for the battery and there were also not enough empty beer cans at home to cash in to get more than a dollar. I guess I’ll have to live with my tuner as it is until I have some money in a week.

      Once I was home I tried to log on to my online bank account only to find a message that told me I had to contact the bank. That led me to a new problem, which is that after I make a call on my new smart phone, the keyboard disappears and so when an automated system asks me to key in additional numbers, I can’t do it. I had to wait to talk to a bank worker, who told me that I had to put my new bankcard number into the system before I can do online banking.

       On my way back to the food bank on Cowan I had to swerve around a pothole that wasn’t just a depression in the concrete. It looked more like the gateway to another world. There was a kid playing with the cardboard box his father had brought in which to carry away food. First he was walking around with the box on his head and then he climbed into the box. Later I saw that his dad had put the box up in a tree, beyond the child’s reach. The boy first got a chair and carried it over to the tree. He got onto the chair but still couldn’t reach the box. Finally he threw a rock, which knocked carton to the ground. His father was very impressed with his son’s resourcefulness, but told him also that he shouldn’t be throwing rocks. The boy continued playing with the box in various ways until he hurt himself and began to cry.
       I got a half a kilo of Starbucks coffee beans (which is a major score) and a large package of frozen cheddar smoky sausages in addition to the regular provisions. There was also a plastic bag with Whiskas cat food inside. I learned my lesson last time that the cats can smell the kind of cat food they are nuts about right through the bag and so they got to it by chewing through the plastic. This time I put the bag high on top of the kitchen shelf where it would be impossible for them to reach, but Daffodil could smell it up there even if she couldn’t see it and in following her nose she was looking straight at it. I put the bag inside of an empty Maxwell House coffee can, so I’m pretty sure it couldn’t be smelt any more.

      I’ve been listening to the Mel Blanc radio show from 1946. So far it’s the least funny radio show I’ve ever listened to. It actually could probably work as a Saturday morning kids show if they were to just take all the voices and animate the story. I find the commercials a lot more interesting. The sponsor was Colgate Tooth Powder. I guess toothpaste hadn’t been invented yet. Also the term bad breath doesn’t seem to have been invented by 1946 either. The term they used was “unpleasing breath”. Another sponsor was Halo Shampoo, which I remember using when I was a kid. They said it didn’t need a lemon or vinegar rinse. I don’t remember ever using a shampoo that needed that.

       There was also something about there being a fat shortage and so people were encouraged to sell cans of their left over kitchen fat to the grocer so that things like soap and nylons could be manufactured.

       I rode toward towers of soft luminous clouds. I took St Clair to Yonge and rode north past the Mt Pleasant cemetery to Merton and then across to Mt Pleasant and down to Moore. There’s a weird street set up between the south side of the cemetery and St Clair. One can’t travel directly south to St Clair because there are two sets of streets divided by low concrete barriers that one can step over but not drive across. All southbound streets curve east at the barrier and so one can only get to St Clair via Mt Pleasant. I’m not sure what the purpose is unless it’s some sort of calming traffic thing.

       I was listening to a French version of “Sealed With A Kiss” and later while I was riding, it occurred to me that parts of Paul Simon’s “The Sounds of Silence” are almost identical to “Sealed With A Kiss”, though Simon’s song ventured off into more complexity from the basic melody they share and of course the lyrics are far more poetic.

Thank You For Peeing In Our Restaurant

      

     
       As I was drinking some water to prepare for my bike ride on Tuesday, I looked out my window and saw a very friendly little brown off leash dog across the street, running from person to person as they passed, then running to one of the planters put on the sidewalk by the Parkdale Business Improvement Association to pee on its base every thirty seconds. I was worried that it might be lost, but whenever no one was passing by it would stand for a few seconds beside a woman who was talking to some people in a car in the Dollarama parking lot, then it went to pee again. I assume it was that woman’s dog.        On my way up Brock Avenue, a car suddenly wove around to pass another car. Once it was in my lane and a car length from me it accelerated straight towards me before veering to the right. That was a scary moment!
       Since on Sunday I finished exploring every street and alley south of Eglinton and West of Yonge, I rode this time along St Clair to start investigating every street north and east of Yonge and St Clair, though east of Bayview I still have to explore the streets north of Danforth.
       On my way down Yonge Street I had to pee really badly but I waited till I was near the bottom of the hill. As I locked my bike I had to keep myself from doing the side-to-side “got to pee” dance. I went into the Rosedale Diner and they were very friendly. The towel dispenser was kind of like a hungry hippo mechanism with a big chomper one had to pull down before it spit out a part of the roll. On my way out, the waitress said “Thank you!” It’s the first time anyone’s thanked me for using their washroom.
       At College and Spadina as I walked my bike across to head south, I could see a big bright, deep red sun peeking from between the buildings.

Strip Tease: a review of the Tranzac Open Stage for Monday August 31st

      

       On the sultry evening of August 31, on my way up Brock Avenue, as I was dipping down under the railroad bridge, across the street there was an old blue and white VW bus sputtering and failing in an attempt to start.
       I arrived in the Southern Cross bar to find Sarah Greene working behind the bar. She was supposed to host, but somehow, Scott Bradshaw had gotten the gig again.
       There were several names already on the list. Number two was available but I didn’t want to go that early, so I tagged myself in at number seven, which was then last place.
       Scott was telling Chaz that he’d moved four times over the summer and that he’d just moved back downtown from Eglinton and Yonge. He said that it was murder climbing that hill on a bike. I told him it just takes practice and that I cycle everywhere.
       Chaz asked if I cycle in the winter as well, and I told him I do, though riding in snow storms like the one big one last winter were pretty tough. Chaz said that he draws the line at winter riding.
       Scott was playing a Willie P. Bennett disc called “Blackie and the Rodeo King” that he’d brought in over the system. The album later inspired a band called “Blackie and the Rodeo Kings”. Scott said that the song is about two Gay native men, but that sure can’t be discerned from the lyrics.
       A good friend of mine who died back in the 90s was married to an ex-girlfriend of Bennett. Mike liked Bennett’s music and gave me a cassette years ago. Nothing grabbed me from that, nor was I impressed all that much with what I heard that night. Some of it sounded a lot like early Bruce Cockburn, though it wasn’t as lyrically innovative or as musically interesting as that of Cockburn. Scott Bradshaw though seemed like he was in ecstasy and couldn’t say enough good things about Willie P. Bennett.
       Scott kicked off the night with a cover of “Lace and Pretty Flowers”, the same Willie P. Bennett song he’d sung two weeks before. The song has kind of a “money can’t buy love message.” In the middle of the song he said that he should be playing harmonica at this point, or have a sideman, but he said he didn’t have the money. Ironic that the song claims that things won’t buy love but the singer claims that they do buy the artistically collaborative equivalent.
       Of his second offering, Scott said that it was a cryptic type song that would be a good lead in for Erik Sedore – “… What I got is not enough for Saturday … Wait till Sunday comes, maybe I’ll have a little fun …”
       When Erik Sedore sat in front of the mic, he declared, “It’s my turn so I can do whatever I want!” He said that he wanted to do two covers because they are very lyrical and he wanted to do them while he had the lyrics in his head. He started with Joni Mitchell’s “Hajira” – “ … I'm sitting in some café, a defector from the petty wars that shell shock love away, there's comfort in melancholy … In our possessive coupling so much could not be expressed, so now I'm returning to myself these things that you and I suppressed … Strains of Miles Davis coming through the snow and the pinewood trees …” It’s interesting that Erik said “Miles Davis” when Joni said “Benny Goodman”. They are two very different types of Jazz music. Also Erik said 27 years instead of Joni’s 30 years, I guess as a way of taking possession of the song.
       Erik’s second cover was of Mark Kozelek’s “Carissa” – “ … Carissa burned to death last night in a freak accident fire in her yard in Brewster. Her daughter came home from a party and found her … An aerosol can blew up in the trash. Goddamn, what were the odds? … She vanished up in flames … Everyone's grieving, out of their minds, making arrangements and taking drugs. But I'm flying out there tomorrow because I need to give and get some hugs … Carissa was thirty-five. You don’t just raise two kids and take out the trash and die …”
       The song is interesting because it’s a heartfelt reaction to a real occurrence, but it doesn’t have much of a melody. I double checked with the original recording by Sun Kil Moon just to be sure it wasn’t just the way Erik played it, but it wasn’t. Erik did the song justice, but the song just isn’t musically very interesting. It’s just a long talking song with some good guitar picking to help it along, but I think that Erik writes some better songs than this one.
       When Erik was finished, he said, “I wanted to play these somewhere once.
       Scott told him that his songs were very cinematic. Erik dismissed his statement by reminding him that he’d done covers, but I think Scott was responding to all he’d heard of Erik’s oeuvre on some Monday nights over this summer.
       The next performer was Lailien, who sang two original songs with a high voice while accompanying himself on the piano. The first was called “Blue Love” – “ … ghostly tide sucked down slowly through a silent night …” His second song was entitled “Why the Flowers” – I wrote a song for you, I’ll sing it from the moon …”
       Then came John P, accompanied by Chaz on the electric steel guitar. On his way to the stage, as John was passing my table, he greeted me and said, “It’s just us diehards tonight. At that time there were only six of us there besides Sarah and Scott. Both John and Chaz had high praise for Scott’s sound mixing. John did his calendar style folk song, which he said was slightly influenced by Paul Simon’s “April Come She Will” and Roger McGuinn’s “The Ballad of Easy Rider” – “ … December, she said she’d never come back, feel free to give my stuff away …”
       John said that his next offering was kind of like a Lou Reed thing – “ … I called up the operator, I said, use a GPS, can you locate her? Don’t tell me it can’t be done. I just finished reading Bill C-51 …” I think that this kind of cultural reference is a big mistake in song writing, because it gives one’s song a shorter shelf life, because in a few years no one will remember what Bill C-51 was. And then later on he says – “ … You were drinking coffee with a Cheshire cat, you said this guy really knows where it’s at.” The rhyming of “cat” with “where it’s at” was already done by Bob Dylan in “Like A Rolling Stone” and I think it’s too distinctive to justifyably copy.
       I’ve noticed this tendency before of John to lift phrases from classic songs. He did for instance in his song “Kaleidoscope Eyes”, which gets it’s title from a repeated phrase in John Lennon’s “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”.
       After John, Anthony was called to the stage, but he wasn’t in the room. He was outside having a conversation with someone about folk music. Scott went out to get him, but when he did come in he went into the wrong room. Cad came in and it turns out that he was the one Anthony had been talking to. Cad has always claimed to hate folk music.
       When Anthony finally arrived he performed two of the five original songs he’s sung every time I’ve heard him play over the last five years. He does them very well and with a lot of style, but it was hard to make out the words while he was busy being soulful. He told us, “Old man and woman I knew …. Both passed away in city shelters … one blue shoe and one green shoe …” And then from the song – “I’m thinkin’ back in the day … no need to stay … ooooh!” That’s all I could discern. Between songs he said, “God damn! The place I come from called ‘The Ramp’ … Little girl never got past the age of seven … she said, ‘Anthony, what’s gonna happen to me is always meant for me …’” From his second song – “ … You think you’re so pretty, and I just know that you’re pretty …” This is a very good song, and so are the few others he plays, but I guess these were written before he was stricken with whatever mental illness he has that keeps him either homeless or sometimes homeless and that keeps him from writing new songs.
       Scott commented that it’s the end of the summer and we need a little drama.
       Following Anthony was Chaz, who started with an improvisation that he called “Right Now”. The piece began with slow, gentle sliding that built in tempo until it became dancey and ended up softly crazy. For the second half of Chaz’s share of the open stage, he asked Scott and No MSG to join him on guitar and piano as he played some basic Blues. I think No MSG had trouble getting into the groove. He’s more comfortable improvising on his own.
       I was next. I started with my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Strip Tease”, but first gave a little background. That it was the title song from a film of the same name, and that it starred Nico. That Nico had recorded the song but that it was sung by Juliette Greco, who John Paul Sartre had dubbed “the muse of existentialism”. No MSG added that she had also been the lover of Miles Davis. That was true too. John asked who directed the film, but I didn’t remember at the time. The director was Jacques Poitrenaud. From my version of the title song – “Would you like me to strip tease for you? What fantasy shall I be for you? As time goes on, day after day, my illusions are peeled away, and every night the summer’s gone once more, as all my leaves are scattered on the floor. And all of this, for what, for who? Is it for him? Is it for you? If it’s for you I do this strip tease, I think you really need to tell me, if you are, just between us, a bit voyeur, a little thug? But all of these are just chimeras, from my mouth to my lower areas, because no one, not even you, will get to touch the parts they view …”
       My second offering was my own “Recurring Vision of a Myopic Third Eye” – “ … Suicide Seven-Eleven, a delicious hemlock Slurpie, free fill-up with cremation, a drive-through death for the sick or depressed, it’s now a less neurotic nation …” I screwed up a lot on the chords, but it seemed to go over okay anyway.
       Then Avesta was called to the stage, but he seemed to have left and so Scott moved down the list to Eric Sorenson, who did two of his own songs. The first was called “Home” – “Well you’re home now, you can shake out the dust, take a moment to do what you must …” Before his second song, Eric asked if someone had a capo he could borrow, and someone always does. I don’t bother with a capo because I think it helps me learn more chords. Eric played a song that he did the week before called “Your Grey Skies”, which he said is a love song to a rain cloud. During the instrumental he said it needed a harmonica but since there wasn’t one he whistled instead.
       After Eric was Dennis, who has an, I think British accent. He strums and sings very forcefully while delivering a lot of heavy lyrics – “ … We also talked about how we perceive existence … no time, no space, no age, no limit … escaping memory … my eyes were equally wide … but one was blind.
       Following Dennis was Sonja Seiler, who did her set from the piano and started with a brand new song called “Slow Burn” – “ … I don’t need to know what you think when you hear this … when it’s our turn we might just have the embers, but I’ll be happy to be tending these fires.” Sonja’s second choice was a cover of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin – “ … I'll close my eyes, then I won't see the love you don't feel when you're holding me …”
       Sonja remained onstage to do backup vocals in the first song of Bryan’s set. He said he’d wanted her to also play piano but she said she was too nervous. The song was entitled, “Steer You Right”, and he sang it in his usual fake cowboy accent. Bryan’s second song was one that he said he’d done before but that he’s got to keep doing it till it comes out right. Scott gave an enthusiastic monosyllabic agreement to that. The song was called “Choppin Wood”, and “wood” and “fire” in the lyrics served as metaphors I guess for the internal substance one builds up and sparks with perhaps one’s spirit to fuel love – “ … Let my heart forever melt and give me a warmth I’ve never felt …” The song was fairly long and I think he overworked the metaphor all the way through, thus beating it over our heads.
       Next came Karen, a middle aged woman with short grey hair. She plugged in her acoustic guitar and stood up. Besides me, everyone else had sat down that night. She began with a cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s Early Morning Rain” and she picked it well. The microphone sounded fuzzy though and when she was done I called out to Scott to point it out, and Karen agreed. He made some adjustments. Karen’s next offering was a slow folk blues song that she said she wrote in Winnipeg – “It’s windy at Portage and Main, I’m all by myself again, so what else is new? … Tomorrow night in some other town because Mister Right is nowhere to be found …”
       Scott commented that she was obviously a professional Folk singer who’s been touring a lot. She added that she’d raised a couple of kids since all of that.
       Cad offered the view that the microphone causes people to have a southern accent and that the reason I don’t have a southern accent when I sing is because I don’t use a microphone.
       Then it was time for No MSG. After he had all the stage lights turned off, Scott asked him if the vocal mic was okay. No MSG answered, “Don’t worry, everything’s good! I got it under control!” As he began to play, he almost immediately started singing, in a high voice – “And I see, I see lolalalolove … hahaheehahoo … and I see … Oh, that one goes here … oh sorry, sorry … that one goes there … here it goes …” The air conditioning was cold on my bare legs. I looked my watch and it was already half an hour past midnight, with nine of us in the room besides Scott and Sarah. No MSG continued and he seemed to be spending longer on the piece than usual. When he stopped, he declared, “I took some chances on that one!”
       I don’t think he had any idea that he’d played the equivalent of two songs already when he went into another one – “Okay, we’ve got one of my favourite keys … one of my particular favourite … so how do I get out of here and find myself and find peace? How can I do that in one take? Is it really possible? Maybe it will happen …” He stood to play the last of it – “Hey! Oh! Woho whoa … I gotta go home … thank you!”
       After No MSG was David Saint B., who had long curly hair and a pair of very shiny beige pants. He started with what he said was a song that he wrote in university. He told us that it was his first song and it was inspired by his second girlfriend. The song was entitled “You Make Me” – “ … Why is it an effort to wanna call you … Why is my heart so unconvinced … It started as a love song but it didn’t start with you …” When he was done, Brock Simpson called out, “That could be a hit! Get on it!”
       David’s second song was called “Weathervane Woman” and he said it was inspired by listening to Bruce Springsteen – “ … I’m a building man, I can’t spend my life searchin for a world that don’t end …”
       Following David was Brock Simpson, who said he’d just returned from working as a counsellor at a summer camp. Someone asked the name of the camp and he responded, “Camp Indifference on the Lake of Nihilism. The counsellors were all children and the campers were bankers.” Brock told us that, inspired by the approaching election, he was going to sing the folk standard, “Aragon Mill” – “ … the only tune I hear is the sound of the wind as she blows through the town, weave and spin, weave and spin. There's no children playing in the dark narrow streets and the loom has shut down, it's so quiet I can't sleep …”
       Brock’s second piece was “Indian Prayer”, which he said Richie Havens didn’t write but he didn’t know who did. It was Tom Pacheco. Each line begins with “As long” and ends with something that will always be, such as “the grass shall grow” The conclusion of each verse is “This land shall be Indian”.
       When Brock was finished it was 1:00. Scott was outside smoking a cigarette. Sarah went to get him but he asked her to play a song and buy some time while he finished his smoke. She said that the cigarette he was smoking was literally very long.
       Sarah sang a song about an affair – “ … You’re all mine in the midnight time but guilty in the morning light …”
       She joked about how whenever Scott hears that Sarah Greene is hosting, he swoops in and steals the gig.
       Scott closed down the open stage, or the “open wound”, as he said someone named Jay Clark calls it, with his song, “Down Where the Lights Come On”.
       Scott said that he has a gig every fourth Saturday at the Tranzac. I said, that it’s Sarah Greene’s gig now. Sarah joked that that should be true.
       As I rode along Bloor Street, I came up behind David Saint B. who was riding his bike with no hands and singing at the top of his lungs. He had a helmet on but I recognized his shiny pants.
       On Brock Avenue, a flatbed truck was backing up it seemed to haul away the dead VW bus that was still there.

Busted Blood Vessel

       There’s a woman that I’ve seen through my window for many years every morning as I play guitar. For most of that time she has looked like she is pushing herself through thick drifts of abrasive air. She’s been hunched over with a permanent frown and looked like there was some horrible burden she’s been carrying.

       In the last year though she has been walking erect and with a little more bounce in her step. The air in her path is no longer a wall that she has to push against. I wonder if it’s the happy little black and white dog that she walks every morning that has changed her life.

       On Monday at around 12:30 I rode up to Long and McWide to buy a G string and I asked for a 0.66 mm string, but even though I specifically said millimetres, the guy behind the counter said, “We don’t have anything that big!” It amazes me that we’ve had the metric system for fifty years and it still hasn’t caught on, except in terms of volume and distance. Weight is sort of fifty-fifty, but when it comes to the size of things, most Canadians seem to be lost and couldn’t possibly tell you how many centimetres tall they are. I really think they should have just broken everybody into it cold turkey fifty years ago.

       I went to the bank to take out my rent money, my phone service money and a little extra for some fruit. A guy in front of me had lost his card and was asking for a new one. He said he loses his card fairly often because he has memory problems. The manager gave him a new card anyway even though he couldn’t provide any proof of his address because he said the people in his house steal his mail. I’m fairly certain that if I’d lost my card and I didn’t have proof of my address on me they would have made me go home to get it.

       It seemed that talking to the guy in front of me put the manager into a certain maternalistic mental state, because when she was serving me she was speaking as if I were a child. I wanted an amount that cut into my fifty dollars of overdraft protection. She talked to me like I didn’t know there would be service charges, and explained it more than once as if I’d been hit on the head and needed special explanations.

       At the supermarket there were finally large bins of delicious local apples on sale. For the last couple of years, I guess because of the weather, the crops have not been good enough to make these available.

       After paying for my phone service I called my landlord, because I hadn’t heard from him since I called him last Wednesday to ask for a bedbug treatment. A young man answered the phone. I don’t think I’ve heard his son’s voice since he was a little boy. It’s deep now and he no longer has a Sri Lankan accent. He was answering the phone because his father was in the hospital from a busted blood vessel in the stomach. I’d always though from the way Raja yelled at me on the phone that it would have been a vessel in his forehead that would explode first. I left a message about needing treatments every two weeks.