Tinkerbell is a Borderline Pedophile with Homicidal Tendencies

           

            On Saturday I finished reading J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan”. What a bizarre and in many ways, surreal story! The hero is totally fucked up, and the little fairy, Tinkerbell, is a borderline pedophile with homicidal tendencies. Barrie was a very good writer though.

            In the evening I was getting ready to go for my bike ride, so I went out back to the deck to feel whether I’d need to wear trousers or not. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some kind of animal come bounding down the fire escape. I looked and saw that it was a squirrel with a green ball in its mouth. As it cleared the deck though I saw that it was stealing one of my upstairs neighbour David’s tomatoes.
            On my way up Brock Avenue another squirrel dashed out to cross the street, just in front of my wheel. I’d never seen a squirrel come that close to being run over by my bike. It is the season though when one sees more of the nutty rodents becoming roadkill as they take risks in their winter prep frenzy.
            The clouds were torn pieces of veils left over after a mad dance of removal. The veils remained suspended and the naked dancer elsewhere. I rode out to Bayview and Moore to explore the streets south and west of there. On my way back along St Clair, the moon wore a blue veil, but as I descended Yonge Street the naked and full moon was smiling.
            I watched “The Bell Boy”, starring Roscoe Arbuckle and co-starring Buster Keaton. The played a couple of hotel bellboys who don’t have their minds on their work. There’s not just one story but rather a collection of comedic situations. Keaton showed himself to be an incredible stunt man in a slapstick battle with some burglars.

Why Don't You Just Get A Job?

           

            For the last few months my friend Ivy and I have been trying to get together for a beer. I had some money to afford a drink a couple of months ago, but she bailed on me at the last minute, She got back in touch recently about getting together again, but I told her I’d be broke until November. On Friday she sent me an email asking me why I don’t get a job. I found that somewhat insulting and responded with, “Wow! I think you’ve just found the solution to the poverty problem in Canada! I wonder why no one’s ever thought of that before!” That set off a bit of an argument in which she told me that since I’m an adult white male with no disabilities there’s no reason why I can’t find some extra work. Ivy is young enough to be my daughter and when I was her age I had plenty of work. If she has to find something new when she’s sixty, she might have more of a problem. We finally agreed to maybe go for coffee but I feel bitter about meeting her now.

When I went to PARC on Friday, the piano was playing and Shelly was singing, so I didn’t talk to her or make an announcement about my class. No one came, and so I left at 15:00. After going home for half an hour I rode up to Moore and Mt Pleasant and then headed east. I dipped down onto a bike trail that although it looked level I guess the there is a subtle decline because I was tearing along over the uneven ground without having to pedal. I thought it was going to be a short trip, but it kept on going and going until I realized I was on the Don Valley Bike Trail. I expected to end up south of Bloor, but it veered west and after a while I realized I was on a different trail. I came out at Mt Pleasant again, crossed over and then wound up travelling north and then west for quite a while. As I was climbing out of a valley, it got so steep that I had to walk. I emerged on Rose Hill, which is just two blocks south of St Clair, so after all that riding I pretty much just went around in a circle.

I finished watching the second season of Bonanza. There were a few episodes in the middle that were interesting, but I won’t be downloading season three. I think there’s only one more year with Pernell Roberts in it anyway.

You Looked Like You Were Praying

            When I arrived for class on Thursday, it was evident that my fellow students were not as keen to hurry up and wait outside the lecture hall. There were not as many there as there had been the previous week. I had come five minutes later than I did on Tuesday and I will come a little later each time until I reach an arrival time that’s just before the previous class ends. There was no time to sit on the floor, plug in my laptop into one the wall outlets and start it up, because it takes so long to start and shut down that I’d only be able to read a couple of paragraphs of Peter Pan at best. I could have used my phone to access the text online but I hadn’t yet set myself up with the U of T network. I tried to get on while waiting but didn’t know where to write my password after being asked for student identification and password, since I could only see one line on which to write.
            Once we were in the room, I looked at the TAs for the other course and later at the ones in my course. Then I thought of all the TAs I’ve had and concluded that for the most part they are a nerdy group. They look like they will never grow up, not in the sense of being childlike but rather as a result of sexual immaturity. I don’t know which one of our TAs is mine yet, but one but the tall one who hugged the professor last week is an expert on Victorian literature.
           In the lecture, we continued with our discussion of Peter Pan. A description of Neverland brings together all of the reading memories of the children who go there, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” and the Grimm’s fairy tales of “The Brave Little Tailor” and “The Six Swans”.
            In Neverland, time and space function similarly and characters travel non-linearly from moment to moment. Unlike most children’s literature of its day, Peter Pan does not use the real world.
            The Picaninnies are a tribe of “redskins” in Peter Pan and yet, Picaninny was a term used to represent dark skinned children, usually of African descent. The phrase “lions and tigers and bears”, later to be used in The Wizard of Oz, came from Peter Pan.
            A mother is the caretaker of her child’s psyche. Adult-child tensions are where all the energy in Peter Pan is generated. The Victorian child was the symbol of innocence, whereas the Edwardian child was the symbol of hedonism. Pan is the god of hedonism.
            The play, “Peter Pan” was originally intended for adults and they loved it. It played continuously for decades.
            The narrator is angry with everyone.
            Tinkerbell is a very small person but the form of her body is that of a sexually mature woman, while her mind is like that of a small child.
            Peter has not lost any of his baby teeth. This is meant to render him charming to adults. Anything that is out of Peter’s sight is out of his mind. He has no long-term memory. He has the ability to change his identity and to manipulate others identities as well. The power to fly represents the power to not be serious, a detachment from responsibility. “To be born is to be shipwrecked on an island” – J. M. Barrie.
            Barrie claimed that he did not remember writing Peter Pan.
            After class I went to the help desk and received quick and easy instructions for accessing the U of T wireless network with my phone. It turned out I was supposed to scroll down to reach the line for my password.
            I then headed out to look in second hand bookstores for some of the reading material for my course that I haven’t been able to find online. I rode first to Eliot’s on Yonge Street, which, when the owner is behind the counter, seems to be a bit of a hangout for retired men who love classical literature. The children’s section was near the counter and while I was perusing the shelves, a young woman came from the back with a book and told the proprietor, “I always find what I’m looking for whenever I come in here.” He said, “You’ve just made my day!” A man with white hair who was standing nearby commented, “This guy’s a national icon!” “Stop it!” the owner protested. His friend continued, “But he has the humility of a T.S. Eliot!” I had been looking for Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons” but I found E. B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” for $3.95, which was such a good price that I thought I’d better take it, even though we won’t be reading that for a few weeks. As I paid for it, the owner, noticing that I hadn’t found what I was originally looking for, told me that another book store, “ABC” was just up the street. I said, “I know, but you store is better.”
             It’s funny how there are bike stands on Yonge Street between the two bookstores, but none on the blocks where each bookstore is located. I locked my bike in front of ABC against a skinny sign showing the parking regulations for that curb.
            The aisleways are narrow at ABC. I was down on my knees and bent over, trying to see what was on the bottom shelf of their children’s section, when an elderly but dapper gentleman who’d been browsing just south of me needed to get by. I stood up to move aside and he spoke to me in a middle class British accent, “I’m sorry! You looked like you were saying your prayers! I really don’t think it’s very nice to disturb someone when they’re saying their prayers!”
            One of the books I needed was there, but I only had about ten dollars and I needed “Swallows and Amazons” to read before the next Tuesday, so I left the other there.
            At Bloor and Huron, in the cluttered bookstore on the east side of the building that used to be Rochedale College, I found “Tom’s Midnight Garden” by Philip Pearce for $4.95. There was also George Macdonald’s “The Princess and the Goblin”, but I couldn’t get it that day so I hid it behind some other books to see if it would still be there the next time I came.
            I went to BMV, where they had “A Little Princess” by Frances Hodgson Burnett for $2.95, but I only had five dollars left and still needed the Ransome book, so I left it there. It’s a good thing too; because I later remembered that that’s one of the books I’d downloaded.
            I rode past Bathurst to the Doug Miller Bookstore, only to find that the place had gone out of business. I headed down to College and a bookstore just east of Little Italy but there was nothing I needed there.
            I made my way east to She Said Boom, where I found “Swallows and Amazons” right away but it was $7.50, so I pedaled west to get ten dollars from the bank and then came back to buy it. I had planned on taking a bike ride after that, but figured that I’d done enough riding for that day.

Goodbye to the Bread Lady

           

            On Wednesday morning I called my doctor’s office, because I noticed on my phone that I’d been called from there the day before. The nurse told me I need an abdominal ultrasound. I hope I don’t find out that I’m pregnant again.

At 11:00 on Wednesday I went down to the food bank to get a number. Last week I came a little later, walked in the door, got a number and left. I’m not sure if it really pays to get there early and to have to stand in line with people smoking cigarettes. One woman brought a wooden chair from near the door and hobbled back with it so she could sit while waiting. She sat there smoking and playing a game on her smart phone until the line moved. She murmured “Ow!” as she walked with the chair. She was about my age or younger, and definitely overweight, but she wasn’t as old or obese as her difficulties made her appear. I guess there is something wrong with her legs.

I my two neighbours’ empties to the beer store so I could buy some three percent milk later on.

When I got back to the food bank, my number was called almost right away. I was reading Peter Pan while sitting in one of the chairs that line the wall. The door person wanted to call five more people in but before that she approached me to ask me to move further down. I looked up from my reading and told her, “No, I’m going to be staying here.” She said, “Okay”, but didn’t appreciate my lack of cooperation with her useless plan. She let five more people in and they filled the seats in the area where she had wanted me to move. Then my number was called and I went to get my food.

A young guy who I hadn’t seen before was my volunteer, but after I’d selected my items from the first shelf, he stepped aside and there was a young, bright faced woman managing the second shelf and another minding the third. These people stuck out like bibles in a porn shop, so I knew they were part of some outside organization. I asked, “Where are you guys from?” One young woman answered, “Achievers, we’re just down the street.”

I had to look them up later on. I had expected to find some ultra sunny gang of Christers, but it turns out that they are with one of those modern organizations that companies hire to train their employees to become better team players. There are phrases on their website like “behaviour driving engine” and “the greatest gap: the state of employee disengagement”. I’m sure there are all kinds of ritualistic methods and that it’s almost a bit cult-like. It all gives me the willies just to think about it. I guess this group might have been either Achievers employees or those of one of their clients, out on a team-building mission.

Sue was not in her normal place with the cold items, but there were two more “achievers” there as well. I found Sue by the bread section. I had been wondering what had happened to the old white lady with the dyed black dreadlocks who usually manages that section. Sue informed me that she died. She would always say, “What can I get for you my dear?” and tended to promote the bread as if she was actually getting paid to push it. “You’ve got to try some of this!” and “Take a few more of these!” I would always end up with way too much bread. I’ll miss her.

She Was Staring At Me

            

             
            When I arrived for class on Tuesday, September 22, a pretty young woman of East Indian descent was sitting halfway up the stairs, waiting for the earlier lecture to be over. I was standing at the foot of the stairs, doing some writing in my notebook. When I looked up though, I noticed that she was staring at me and didn’t look away like most people would when I looked back. I smiled slightly at her and she smiled slightly back, but I went back to my writing. Maybe she was expecting me to talk to her.

            I haven’t figured out yet what the subject is of the class before ours. The instructor has either an eastern European or a Slavic accent. Before she erased the blackboard, I could make out the name Visigoths among the jumble of other words that covered the board. There are a lot more older students in their class than there are in mine.

            Professor Baker was wearing a blue suit with a short, collarless jacket. Her skirt was wrinkled and loose fitting at the hem. Two of the course TAs were sitting in the middle of the front row and when the professor came over, she stood up and gave her a hug. They’ve probably worked together over several years, as is often the case as the TAs work toward their PhDs.

            In the first part of the lecture, Deirdre finished talking about E. Nesbit’s “Story of the Treasure Seekers”. She said that neither the children in the book, nor the world in which they live are idealized. It reflects Nesbit’s own upbringing and her domestic environment with her own family. The real power in the world of these children is in their imagination.

            In the text, Nesbit both pays homage to children’s literature of the past but also mocks the conventions that have been established based on those works. The texts that she cites generates creativity that lands against the wall of realism. The stories mock improbably endings.

            The treasures that the seekers acquire are far less than what they imagine they will gain, but it is appreciated as if it were greater. They often misread the messages presented by their environment but that misreading ultimately results in a traditional fairy tale ending, similar to Cinderella. They are elevated to affluence. And so after opposing conventions throughout the book, Nesbit bows to them in the end, thus fulfilling our expectations.

            The children are self-parenting, using as a guide a sense of honour acquired from reading. The message is that the British are designed and equipped to be the caretakers of the world.

            Their uncle reads the language of the furniture in the children’s home.

            Only imaginative and artistic adults have the ability to win the children’s respect. Imagination is presented as a power than derives from being open to childhood.

            I asked the professor to clarify what she said was anti-Semitic in the way the moneylender is presented in the book. It seemed like a fairly light sort of racism to me in that Rosenbaum is presented as a stereotype. I pointed out that there is a much more extreme case of racism later on when the children’s uncle declares that he would have wanted to have been seen to be behaving like a “nigger”. She said that when Rosenbaum is about to give the children a coin, he stops to caress it first and then decides to give the children something less valuable. In this way he is presented as a “grasping Jew”. In the end, when the children’s fortunes change and almost everyone they encountered in all of the stories shows up at a celebration, the kids ask if Rosenbaum will be coming. The adults dismiss him as having gotten his money back and so he wouldn’t care to be there.

            At this point, I could smell that someone behind me in the class had farted.

            After a short break, Professor Baker began to lecture about J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan”. Referring to the film, “Finding Neverland”, she said that Barrie never looked even remotely like Johnny Depp, but he might have led a much happier life if he had.

            The work began as a play for adults, entitled “The Little White Bird”, many years before it was published in 1928 as “Peter Pan”. In the original story, a man emotionally appropriates a little boy from another family. This is very similar to the real relationship between J. M. Barrie and George Llewellyn Davies. Barrie, at the time was already the best selling author of his time even before publishing Peter Pan, but the fantasy was a survival mechanism for him, because he could not deal with the adult world.

            James Barrie was the youngest and considered by his mother to be the least brilliant of her children, especially when compared to her oldest son. Ironically it was his brother who never really grew up because he died before he had a chance to. She made it clear that James was a disappointment to her and so his childhood was haunted by a lack of maternal love and acknowledgement. He was obsessed with trying to please her and kept a tally of every time he was able to make her laugh. Even in adulthood he was only 1.2 meters tall and in school, because of his height and because he had a very high voice, he was always cast as a girl in school plays. Coincidentally, Peter Pan was traditionally played by young women.

            Even after marrying, Barrie was asexual and incapable of adult passion. He was happiest with other people’s children. The Llewellyn Davies children’s father found it often annoying that he came around so much, but when he died, James became their benefactor. He even had the mother’s will altered so that when she died he would become the children’s legal guardian. Three of the five boys grew up to commit suicide and the rest were just unhappy. Their play consisted of long narratives that continued from day to day. He spoke to them about fairies as if he had first hand knowledge of them.

            The narrator of Peter Pan is very untypical, in that he is prickly and expresses opinions about the characters he is describing. He says at one point that he despises the mother of the Darling children.

            Peter Pan cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not, and even pretend meals are just as satisfying to him. This confusion of real and unreal has proven to be infectious with children’s audiences when the story is performed as a play, especially in the scene where the audience’s clapping is that which saves Tinkerbell’s life.

            Neverland is an internal and personalized space that is different with every child.

            After class I went up to the Admissions and Awards office to ask about my grant and about my student balance. I was given a fairly good assurance that I will definitely be getting the other half of my grant in January. That means that I have to find out how much a half course is so I can save half of that from my grant refund until I have the other half in January. When I told the counsellor about the $7,000 balance on my student account, she was surprised and said it must be a glitch. She advised me to go to Student Services on Huron. I had trouble finding it and then I had trouble finding a free locking stand for my bike. I had to walk half a block down to College. At Student Services I was told I had to go to my registrar’s office and change my billing to “per course”. On my way up St George I passed a young man with very skinny legs under vertically striped baggy trousers riding a bike by pushing it along with his right leg. At Woodsworth College, the guy at the registrar’s desk simply gave me a slip of paper with a URL on it so I could change my account to per course billing. I guess I was supposed to have already done that.

            I rode down to OCADU for my first job of the new semester. I was fourty-five minutes early, so I went to the models lounge to nap. While I was there, my ex-landlady, Helga walked in. I didn’t talk to her and haven’t for years because I have bad memories of her devious tricks that resulted in me getting evicted from her place back in the mid-nineties.

            I worked for Bob Berger, who is one of my favourite instructors at OCADU. He’s genuinely interested in the people he talks to and enthusiastic about life and art. I just did one head pose for his class and he suggested I just read, so I got through two chapters of Peter Pan, reading from my laptop.

            After work, I went to the washroom for a while and while I was there, I checked my phone. There had been three calls from my doctor’s office that day and one the day before. Dr Shechtman had told me that if there was no problem with my second lab tests, he wouldn’t call me, so I guess that means I have to get an ultrasound done of my kidneys. I would have to call on Wednesday to find out for sure.

Getting My Head Out of Summer

            

           

            I think I’m still trying to get my head out of summer and the routines I established during my time off from school. On Monday I’d finished reading Edth Nesbit’s “The Story of the Treasure Seekers”, but not until that night. When the writing assignments start soon, I’ll have to free up more work time by cutting away at my holiday habits. For a start, I decided to stop reading the news every day online.

            Of  “The Story of the Treasure Seekers”, although it’s a children’s book, I think that it’s about class. In particular, it illustrates the financial deterioration of the British middle class as the British Empire began its decline. Nesbit seems to be setting up a reclamation of middle class values, education, cooperation and a sense of adventure as the cure for the decline.

            Throughout the book, she keeps the middle class separate from the other classes, but allowing a window of communication with the upper class through its oldest and youngest members. As for the working class, they are pretty much all portrayed as faceless and undeveloped characters, only slightly more discernable than the adults in a Peanuts comic strip.

            The only working class character with a personality is the family’s housekeeper, Eliza, but she is mostly presented in a negative light in being irritable and not very good at her job. She is considered so unimportant that when the family’s fortunes change and they move to a mansion in the country, Eliza simply disappears from the story.

            That evening I rode up to Heath and Mount Pleasant and then east to where Heath stops at the woods. I was wearing shorts and an unbuttoned long sleeved shirt. It was not so warm that I felt the need to remove the shirt.

I Do NOT Have A Moses Complex! : a review of the Plastiscene reading series for September 20

           

            It was a much cooler evening than the month before as I rode on Sunday, September 20^th to yet another new location of the Plastiscene Reading Series. This time it was at Habits Gastropub on College Street. It took me eight minutes to get to College and Dovercourt from my home in what is pretty much the centre of Parkdale. That’s one minute longer than it took me to get to The Belljar Café in Roncesvalles Village for last month’s reading. I guess that this venue of the month club is fun and interesting to some extent but it’s probably better to be in one place in order to build recognition and so people don’t have to use their secret decoder rings in order to find the event.

            Susie Berg, David Clink and Michael Fraser were already at a front table when I arrived. Susie told me that the reading would be in the back, but she didn’t yet know exactly where.

            I sat down at their table and asked Susie if she had a Moses complex with all this wandering around from venue to venue from month to month. She didn’t seem to appreciate the humour of my suggestion and was a little testy when she responded, “No I do not!” She added that she just wanted to end all this work and find one place. I said, “So did Moses!”

            They all had piles of paper beside them and it had the look of a group of actors working on a play as they looked down at identical pages that they each had in front of them and made comments about the text. It turned out that they were workshopping one another’s poetry. Kathleen Zinck arrived and joined us, and then she also added a poem to be tweaked by the comments of others. For my part, I’m always willing to listen to other people’s suggestions about my poems and offer mine about theirs, but I find the concept of workshopping a little weird. It seems formal and artificial to me.

            Kathleen’s poem was about being locked up at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. CAMH is an oddly named place because one would assume they work for mental health and against addiction and yet the name implies that they are “for” addiction. It seems to me that they should find a word that means the opposite of addiction for their name. The problem though is that there aren’t very many antonyms for addiction that would fit here. Perhaps “independence” would work, as in the “Centre for Independence and Mental Health”.

            Charlene Challenger said she knew someone who had tried to commit suicide and ended up with a psychiatric record that prevented her from working with children.

            We all moved down to the back. Habits Gastropub is long and narrow, and at the back, behind a glass wall, is a living room sized brewery with six shiny cylindrical stainless steel canisters, each about two meters high. Nicki Ward decided to set up the performance area at one side of the back end, facing a long picnic style table with two detached benches.

            Someone who I didn’t recognize said spoke to me by name, asking how I was and how my summer had been. I told him that it had been interesting but I never get as much done as I want to. He said he didn’t either, but added, “It was a nice summer though.” Someone else said, “It’s all over tomorrow!”

            Nicki seemed like she was chomping at the bit to get going, as she started to address the audience about half an hour earlier than usual to let them know we would be underway shortly.

            I was wondering where Paul Valliere was as I signed up for the open stage.

            There were about twelve of us there when Nicki said, “Okay, lets get going!” but Susie said, “It’s so early! We start at 6:30!” “What time is it now?” “6:20.” “Okay, everyone return to their pre-poetic state for another ten minutes.”

            Paul Valliere arrived just before start time. He said he’d gotten the wrong address from the email that Plastiscene sent out.

            As Nicki began mistressing the ceremonies, she had to stop and walk over to tell Paul to be quiet, as he was having a conversation at his table. He hadn’t realized that we’d started, probably because there was no microphone this time to give more authority to Nicki’s voice.

We began with the open stage slash poems from a hat segment and Nicki reminded us to keep it down to three minutes and so not to read anything too Joycean. David Clink quipped, “There’s no Joycean in Mudville!”

As Nicki has done for the last several months in a row, Nicki asked me to go first. I said I was going to do several short pieces that included some thoughts, some haiku, some short poems and a tanka. Nicki asked, “Thirty-one syllables?” I told her that I don’t do all that neurotic syllable counting, and that a tanka is basically a haiku with a couple of lines thrown in at the end. Of the thoughts: “If god doesn’t want me to masturbate, the pervert should stop watching me do it.” Of the haiku, “Above the cleared sidewalk a man walks the tightrope of the snow bank.” The tanka was, “ice plated snow reflecting the alley light glows pearlescent on the roof, breathing the cold air I toss the bag of cat shit.” Of the short poems, I finished with, “It would be a gas for someone to do me a solid and buy me a liquid.” Nicki said that I should title the last one “The Triple Point of Water”.

            David Clink read a poem from the hat. It was Peter Balakian’s “The Children’s Museum at Yad Vashem” – “ … The candles have laughing faces. The sun is sealed across. My mother turns into dust. My hand disappears. I walk across some stones. A scroll of a viola is a Nazi cross; the sky is a cave of faces …”

            Next was another poem from the hat, and this one, selected by one of the featured readers, and read by another member of the audience, was “A  Sea Monster Tells It’s Story” by David Clink – “ … the seas boyancy holdin my skeletun aloft, holdin this oshun enclosd by skin … In the mornin the water is gone. I can hear the ancient creek of my bones, my skin gettin crispy …”

            Returning to the open stage, we heard Sharon Berg reading her poem, “Willow” – “ … all things begin in dust or the memory of dust … my father’s father … not allowing the midwife to assist his wife … my grandfather became the ghost of himself, the bible spread over his knees …” The poem continued on for well over three minutes.

            Then Nicki called on Paul Valliere, who began by telling us that he learned on his recent trip to the Maritimes that at 74%, Prince Edward Island had the highest voter turnout in the last federal election. Paul then did a poem he wrote called “Votin In The Free World”, that was inspired in form by a Neil Young song- “ … Keep on votin' in the free world. I see native women without rights and I cannot understand why they are murdered so easily …” At the end of each verse he repeated the title phrase three times, just as Neil Young does in his song. The problem with such repetition in a spoken version is that it becomes tedious and awkward. It would have been more effective if he’d simply said the phrase once at the end of each verse.

            After Paul was Kathleen Zinck, who read her poem, “The Drifter”, which she said was an “Invisible poem about god …”

            Kathleen was followed by Lisa Richter, and she read her poem, “Visitation in Kensington Market” – “ … Still they lie in incandescent stupor …” and another entitled “Storage Space Contents” – “ … memories of ashtrays …”

            Next someone read George Bilgere’s “Beautiful Country” – “ … the two of them are about to embark upon a long and dangerous pilgrimage … down into a rocky valley
called Couples Counseling … They’re x-raying their relationship like a couple of art collectors trying to figure out if the Rembrandt they bought last month is a fake. They’re giving their love the third-degree under a hot and blinding light, and by God they better get some answers. Meanwhile, every day that tongueless little sachet of cells is finding more and more articulate ways of saying, What about me? But I’m just strolling in my garden with a glass of cold white wine, watching the daisies wave their yellow flags
from that beautiful country called Not My Problem.”

            With the open stage over, Nicki called a fifteen minute break.

            When we returned, Nicki commented about the light shining down on the performance area. She said that a light shining in your eyes changes your prescription while your reading, in the same way that a camera changes its aperture.

            Nicki then shared a quote: “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” She wasn’t sure who it was from, but someone suggested Oscar Wilde. It was Mark Twain, but there is a phrase with a similar meaning written much earlier in French by Blaise Pascal.

            I looked behind me and saw that the pub was empty other than us.

            Before introducing the first feature, Nicki, as she sometimes does, added her own voice to revisit a poem that had been read earlier. This time it was Lisa Richter’s “Storage Space Contents” – “ … Forked lizard tongues … the forgotten tails of tadpoles …”

            Nicki referred to the first invited writer, Brian Purdy, as the “fifth Beatle”. She said that five Beatles had gone to see the Maharishi but only four came back.

            Brian began with a poem called “Nervously Smiling”, about himself and his father – “ … You are the same … not one hair is out of place … Soon, like you, I will be embalmed in photographs …” From another poem – “ … Plath could not escape the sucking vacuum, Lawrence rides his rocking horse forever …”

            Brian told us, “What most people don’t know about Al Purdy is that he was a breed.” He explained that this is an old term, meaning that he was part Native. One quarter Cherokee to be specific. Brian read “Bastard Race” – “ … Their women stitched blue mountains in the sky …” At this point there was a sudden loud clattering from behind the nearby kitchen door, and Brian stopped reading to comment, “My friends in the kitchen are making sound effects!”

            Brian’s next poem was entitled “Tin Can Creek”, and when he was finished, the audience applauded, as they had done after every poem. This time though, Brian said, “I’m worried, with all this clapping that you won’t have anything left at the end. He then read “Recalcitrant” – “ … Suffering child, come to me, for comfort given clumsily … If there is not perfect passion, still it will suffice for ration …” He followed this with “Song of the Impractical Poet”, and when that was done he exclaimed, “Now I miss the clapping!” and so people applauded and he said, “I have to be honest! It’s been a long time since I read. You’re a good audience!”  After that Brian read “Home Run, Exhibition Stadium, Toronto, 1985” – “The blood deep roar of a thousand lions …” He talked about having been so swept up in the excitement that he was still holding his lukewarm drink as he left the stadium. He took it home and placed it on the mantle as a souvenir. His next poem was “Egyptian Blues” – “ … There’s a concubine riding my camel …” Then he read “The Ishtar Gates of Babylon”, and then “Sultan Bounce” – “ … The cats wind through their legs like nine mixed blessings … Banging an empty cup against a hydrant … The guests uncoil their question marks …” Brian finished with a poem called “Song At Sixty” – “Bring fireflies to the wedding feast …”

            Brian’s Purdy, when he uses rhyme, shows a talent for it, and while his poetry has, from time to time, some well conceived phrases, they don’t often flow together well as a complete poem. There’s something sentimentally dusty about his style that is more about craft than art as if he doesn’t feel like he has to try to break ground our burn as a poet in order to penetrate to the core of what he is trying to communicate.

            After Brian was finished and Nicki began to speak, a clatter of noise from the dishwashing area near the door rang out. Nicki commented, “In addition to competing with bad lighting, we are also competing with good hygiene!”

            The second feature of the night was Charlene Challenger, who began right away reading from the manuscript of a novel that seemed to represent an alternate world similar to our own but with different names for the societies within. There was tension between westerners and easterners – “ … Five golden loaves of bread … do you think westerners bother to take the maggots out? … Besides our tour group there are no civilians … we were told not to photograph … Six western soldiers point their rifles at me … they wait on edge for the crackle of gunfire, for my blood to hit the dust … Blind soldiers so hungry they can barely hold their guns …” This must have been the end of the chapter, as Charlene changed direction and began reading a story from the point of view of the ten year old daughter of a high ranking official – “ … Vincent told me my birth was never announced because I am a girl … No sense in painting the bud before it blooms … “ The story lingered for a long time on the spoiled girl whining about wanting her aunt to lend her the medals from her uniform until finally the girls father insisted that the child be given what she desired. Charlene had already gone well past her allotted fifteen minutes when she began delving into the rivalry between the girl and her brother. Finally Nicki intervened and cut Charlene short, adding that a good rule of thumb when reading under a time limit is to allow oneself sixty words a minute.

            The first chapter that Charlene Challenger read of her novel for young adults that was engaging and went along at a fairly good pace. She painted a good portrait of a military society keeping up a good front while its people were wasting away. Her second chapter though indicated that she could profit from paring down her narrative to keep it from becoming tedious.

            Nicki called a break at this point, and so I went outside, where I found Paul Valliere and Kathleen Zinck, who asked me hopefully, “Is it over yet?” Paul argued that novels should be banned from poetry readings. I didn’t agree with that. There have been a fair number of well-written prose pieces, either in the format of short stories or novel excerpts that have been read over the years by features at Plastiscene. Paul agreed that short stories can be okay but he said that even to read on his own, most novels have a hard time holding the attention. I told him about Alice Munro’s view that she’s never read a novel that couldn’t have been a better short story. He thought that made sense. I think it’s often true, but some novels, such as Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Dispossessed” wouldn’t work in a shorter format.

            After the break, Nicki read the bio of the third guest reader, Keith Garebian. After informing us that he’s published more than a thousand articles in one hundred newspapers, she commented that it’s obvious that he can’t hold down a job.

            Keith began by telling us that he believes very strongly in the oral quality of poetry. In the first half of his set he read from his book of poetry about the relationship between Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, based on their letters. He began with O’Keeffe alone – “ … Words and I are not good friends … all I have are marks …” Then a poem based on Stieglitz on O’Keeffe – “ It’s the drawings … my heart stood still, I was afraid … reflect you, and you are always you … a soul like yours roaming through space …”

            Keith told us that when they were lovers before marriage, Stieglitz took nude photographs of O’Keeffe. Keith shared a poem based on these pictures – “ … Her nipples … swelling hips … probing the life of her pores … blind touch to sight …” Another poem, called “Apple Fever” spoke on the same subject – “ … Birds stalk the fruit … light that falls on her nakedness like fever …” From another poem about the photos – “ … These photos are by a detached lover … a man with a phallic camera … These photos are by a narcissist … her poses are not fine phrases …”

            Keith said the book is a meditation on desire. From another poem – “ … Foment of blooming clouds … Trusting each other as a perfect lens …” A poem called “Hands” takes O’Keeffe’s perspective – “ … He sees me as a hand curling around … hands are useful things … When I stride around, my walking stick says I am … dead cottonwood … Rorschach colours … my hands make smooth shapes … my hands unafraid … an invisible river under the earth …”

            The second half of Keith’s set featured excerpts from a book of satire aimed at the Republican right wing of the United States. It addresses several right wing politicians and poets as if they were poets. He began with Sean Hannity, who claimed, “Halloween is a Liberal holiday.” Michelle Bachman said, “Planned parenthood is the Lens Crafters of big abortion.” Mitt Romney – “Corporations are people.” Keith said that Rush Limbaugh took on the style of Allen Ginsberg with his assault on classical studies – “What the hell is Classical Studies?  What classics are studied?  Or, is it learning how to study in a classical way?  Or is it learning how to study in a classy as opposed to unclassy way?  And what about unClassical Studies?  Why does nobody care about the unclassics?  What are the classics?  And how are the classics studied?  Oh, cause you're gonna become an expert in Dickens?  You're assuming it's literature.  See, you're assuming we're talking classical literature here.  What if it's classical women's studies?  What if it's classical feminism?  Who the hell knows what it is?  One thing I do know is that she, the brain-dead student, doesn't know what it is, after she's got a major in it.  Because all she knows to do with it is go down to Occupy Wall Street and complain.” Keith then quoted Paris Hilton – “Barbie is my role model.” And “A life without orgasms is a world without flowers.” Actually, I know Keith was making fun, but I think that last one is quite beautiful. He then quoted Ted Nugent, “the Rosa Parks of gun ownership”, who, on the subject of South Africa, where he manages a hunting reserve, says – “The preponderance of South Africa is a different breed of man. I mean that with no disrespect. I say that with great respect. I love them because I'm one of them. They are still people of the earth, but they are different. They still put bones in their noses, they still walk around naked, they wipe their butts with their hands. And when I kill an antelope for 'em, their preference is the gut pile. That's what they fucking want to eat, the intestines. These are different people. You give 'em toothpaste, they fucking eat it...I hope they don't become civilized. They're way ahead of the game.” Keith finished with a piece called “Epistemology”, which he said was by Donald Rumsfeld – “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.”  This is also quite beautiful, and I remember when Rumsfeld said this, but even he has said that he didn’t originate these phrases, as they go back at least to the 1970s in quotes from various scientists in both astrophysics and in the mining industry.

            Keith Garebian is a good poet, but I find that his choice of subject matter robs him of a chance to truly shine. His voyeuristic use of the letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz as a jumping off point for writing poetry is all fine and good, but their own letters are really just as poetic in themselves and so his efforts don’t really enhance our experience of them. Keith’s use of direct quotes from right wing politicians and pundits is interesting and entertaining as found poetry, but it would have been better if he had brought something drawn from his own life, from his own ideas to share. Every poet’s life makes better poetry than when he or she tries to make poetry out of someone else’s life. We know ourselves infinitely better. Turning someone else’s writing into poetry, especially if that’s all one does, feels like an escape.

            The final featured reader of the night was James Dewar, who read two pieces. The first had been written in the aftermath of a three year affair, when a friend of his invited him out of Toronto to Pakenham to help him get over it – “ … Deer hunters clustered … faces flickering in the lights … many looked too young to be taking aim … The bartender, hiding her beauty still inside her … Stood on the only five span stone bridge in North America … We left the highway … rocks poking up like ribs … knuckles sometimes white against the doors … This a place to kill everything and put in hydro lines … My eyes immobilized me … We’re carved from this land, sometimes as hard as stone,  the cottage … I clung to the back of an old oak … “woosh!” back to the night … I lived … The first thin lines of translucent brittle ice …”

            James told us that he and his friend had drank a lot more than was mentioned in the piece, and they’d smoked 250 grams of hash.

            The dishwasher went behind James with a mop pale on wheels. James commented that it sounded like a plane coming in.

            James’s second piece was written about 9-11, and entitled “Armageddon, Come and Gone” – “ …The three remaining gods … Obliteration of all things proven and disproved before … the jarring end to technocratic ignorance … that split second of understanding that we are not immortal …Each side sacrifices their young … a land of graves … still and dead in the searing dust … bullets traded for oil refineries … helicopters aloft in black dragon arrays … consumers of misery7 … the brick and mortar of useless temples ...”

            James Dewar has some good descriptive writing, interspersed with prose that captures the mood that the surroundings inspire and his 9-11 piece captured the sentiment of weariness over the war that followed the attack and the futility of perpetual conflict spurred by greed and fanaticism.

            Nicki closed by stating that poetry can be frivolous, but it must always be intentional. “Go forth” she urged, “and be good poets!”