All Drunked Up With Places to Go

           

            On Wednesday at 11:00 I went to the food bank to get a number. There was a short wait while some volunteers unloaded a Second Harvest truck. I wrote down some ideas for a narrative analysis assignment that would be due soon. I got number sixteen and went home.

            When I returned, it was close to 13:30. I was parking my bike on King Street when Sue and another volunteer came out for a smoke break just before the rush. As they walked to the corner, Sue complained, “It was so cold this morning!” The guy countered, “It was refreshing!” She argued, “It was cold!” He insisted, “It was refreshing!” After I’d locked my bike, I walked past them and heard him telling her that when he was growing up in Jamaica he’d thought that the summer was eight months long.

I didn’t spend much time sitting. After number fifteen had been called, I went and stood by the entrance. While the doorkeeper was waiting to call more numbers, perhaps it was because I was the only one nearby, but she struck up a conversation with me. She commented, “Everyone looks so grumpy today!” I said, “Maybe it’s because grumpy rhymes with hungry.” She said that she’d heard that there’s a new word in the dictionary: “Hangry”. Apparently it’s a composite of “hungry” and “angry”.

            After I’d begun shopping and had taken my selections from the first volunteer’s shelves, I was just crossing over to Sue in the cold section when a very drunk man in his late sixties came up to the shelf, saying he needed something to drink. He was asked what his number was and he told them twenty-three. He was told that number hadn’t been called yet and that he should go back and sit down. He ignored the volunteer and kept on trying to go to the shelf. I think he wanted a can of pop. Sue tried to tell him to sit down as well and wait his turn. He said he didn’t have time for that. I wondered if he had an appointment for which he needed to be drunk to prepare.

How come no one ever tells me that I need to be very intoxicated before showing up to give samples for a lab test? Or why am I never told when arranging for a job interview that I need to be inebriated beforehand so the potential employer can assess my character under adverse conditions?

Sue asked Theresa to deal with the man. Theresa is at least as tall as I am, and though she didn’t touch the drunk guy or even speak to him aggressively, height does seem to have power over people.

There was no milk in Sue’s section, so I had to settle for vanilla soymilk. There was a package of sliced ham and two bag lunches, each consisting of a vegetable wrap, some coleslaw, some veggie sticks and some mayonnaise dip.

The bread section is self-serve now that the regular bread lady is dead. While I was getting some bagels and a loaf of raisin bread, the drunk guy was standing over by the fruit and vegetable lady. She told him, “You’re all drunked up! You’ve got to go!”

I noticed that near the vegetable and fruit lady there’s a brand new double glass door, stainless steel refrigerator. I commented, “This is new!” “Yes” she said, “and it’s all mine!” She gave me a very large sealed bag of pre-washed and chopped lettuce. The only problem with that though is that once it’s open it goes bad fairly quickly. A whole head of lettuce is more practical, because I can put it the stock end in water and preserve it for a while.

Just after I finished unlocking my bike, a tall guy in his thirties, who’d just crossed King Street, asked me, “What number you had?” I told him. He said, “That’s okay then!” and he headed toward the foodbank, but turned, pointed at me and said, “Sorry!”

I was actually pretty hungry when I got home and ate both of the vegetable wraps with the dip.

That evening I rode up Dufferin and while I was waiting for the light at Davenport, a guy pushing his bike walked by wearing a red scarf wrapped around his neck and a toque down over his ears. It wasn’t that cold.

I went up to Merton and Mount Pleasant and then east to Bayview. On the way home there was a rock band playing at Dundas Square. They sounded pretty modern and tight, but I didn’t recognize them as I passed. Looking at the Dundas Square schedule, it looks like it might have been 54-40.

I watched the Roscoe Arbuckle film, “Backstage”, co-starring Buster Keaton. Arbuckle and Keaton are set builders for a theatre company but their antics cause the regular players to quit, so they put on a show of their own.

Rain On My Smart Phone

           

            When I entered the lecture hall someone was already sitting in my usual seat. I didn’t notice her coming in, but it turned out she was another TA.

            We finished talking about Peter Pan.

            In the play, the father of the Darling children and captain Hook are traditionally played by the same actor.

            The professor stopped lecturing for a moment and walked up the aisle because she mistakenly thought that a student was doing something other than taking notes on her laptop.

            A child is an indeterminate person and childhood is a time of identity experimentation. To fly is to not be grounded. Adulthood is presented as a disappointing time in which possibilities are narrowed. Adulthood is loss.

            Peter Pan is an emotionally detached wild child. He has the power to imitate others but Peter Pan never changes.

            The narrator is schizophrenic and sadistic. Sometimes he is chatty, sometimes sentimental and sometimes resentful. Sometimes he acts like he doesn’t know what will happen and at other times he promises a good outcome. The story is told carelessly. At one point he says, “Let us murder a pirate” to show how Captain Hook treats his men. At another point he tosses a coin to decide which story he will tell. He is not telling the story of Peter Pan to children. Sometimes he acts like he detests children, but it’s false hostility, almost like the response of a jilted lover. He says he despises the children’s mother but later declares that he likes her best. The narrator is barred from unconditional love. Saying that a fairy is born from a baby’s first laugh or that Wendy “made herself cheap” in being intimate with Peter is meant for adults. The narrative carries in it vestiges of its various evolutionary stages as it developed as a play. The result is that the story flies in the face of realistic expectations. “How delicious to spoil it all.” “Nobody wants us, so lets watch and say jaggy things in hopes that it will hurt.” The narrator serves to keep the reader from relaxing.

            We are peeping toms of Neverland but Peter is a voyeur of our world.

            The period in which Peter Pan developed as a play was one in which playwrights tended to present their own hang-ups in the work. Oscar Wilde also identified with the god, Pan.

            The 1880s and 1890s were a time when men identified as boys. Later, during the First World War, many boys went to war and never had a chance to grow up. They would name their trenches after places in children’s books.

            The TA next to me seemed older than the others and also a little standoffish.  It turns out that her name is Christina and she is my TA.

            After the half time break we began talking about Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons”. When Ransome went to public school he lived in Lewis Carroll’s old room. He apparently proposed to every woman he ever dated until finally a mentally ill woman said “yes”.  Because of his bad eyesight he could not fight in world war two and so he joined the press corps and was sent to Russia, where he developed sympathies for the Bolshevik cause. He played chess with Vladimir Lenin on a regular basis. He was suspected by some in Britain of being a double agent. He might have had an overblown sense of his own political importance.

            The map Ransome made of the lake on which the children are vacationing has east at the top. This is apparently an old style of orientation because the most important place in the Christian world was considered to be Jerusalem.

After class, I took advantage of the student network on campus and sat on a bench outside the Ramsey Wright Building to go online with my phone. I managed to make it so I could check my online banking by smartphone, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the numbers large enough to read. Then it started to rain on my phone and I so I rode home.

            At home, I tried to figure out the math on my student account, and I managed to do so, but I still don’t know how much money I’ll have in January.

            All my laundry that I left hanging on the railing of the deck was being soaked in the rain, but there was no point bringing it in, because it wouldn’t dry inside anyway. I’d just have to leave it for a sunny day and hope for the best.

            That night I watched the Roscoe Arbuckle silent film, “The Hayseed”, co-starring Buster Keaton. Arbuckle ran a general store in a small town and the store served several functions, including that of post office. In one scene, Arbuckle is delivering mail and trying to fit a large letter into the slot of a mailbox. Since it won’t fit, his solution is to rip the letter into four pieces and then put them in.

            On Saturday nights the general store serves as a dance hall and afterwards they have a talent show. Roscoe is supposed to sing but he tells Buster that his voice is not up to it, so Buster tells him that if he eats a lot of onions it will make his voice strong. He eats several bunches of green onions and then sings a very sad song that makes everyone cry.

Bedbugs on the Ropes?

           

            Monday was another day to prepare my place for bedbug treatment. When the Orkin guy arrived, just before 11:00, I realized in telling him of the current status of the infestation, that I have not seen a lot of the bloodsuckers lately. I had killed one on the bedroom door the previous morning, though very early on Saturday morning I’d gotten up and probed around the baseboards with a skewer stick, killing about fifty. The technician suggested that maybe we’ve caught a break and it’ll be over soon. I left my place in his hands and went to the library, as the streets were too wet to take a long bike ride.
            At the library I read several chapters of Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons” and got caught up on some writing.
            After two and a half hours I went home t take care of my laundry. Since the sun was not out, if I hung my bedding out on the deck, the pillows would definitely not be dry for probably days. I had one toonie, so I decided to splurge. I took all my pillows, my bedding, socks and underwear to the Laundromat and put them in the dryer. I used all eight quarters to buy fourty-five minutes because pillows take a long time to dry. I went home for twenty minutes and then came back to find my sheets dry. I set the dryer going again and went home. When I returned, I discovered that the dryer had torn one of my pillows apart. Even after fourty-eight minutes, the other pillow and my socks were still a bit damp.
           I finished watching the Roscoe Arbuckle film, “Out West”. A gang of bandits led by a blond cowboy named Black Bart rides into town to rob the saloon. When they charge in the door with their guns out, they shout “Hands up!” and everybody puts their hands up, including the clock on the wall. Roscoe is working the bar while a pretty Salvation Army lady is collecting money for charity. Black Bart begins trying to kiss her. Buster Keaton tries to stop him but he is fought off easily. Arbuckle hits Bart over the head with about twenty bottles and then he shoots him several times, but nothing fazes him and he keeps on trying to kiss the Sally Ann girl. Finally, Roscoe finds Bart’s weakness and they defeat him by tickling him. He’s even ticklish on the bottom of his cowboy boots.
           I watched another silent film that was both written by, directed by and starred Roscoe Arbuckle, called “Moonshine”. He and Buster Keaton play “Revenuers” trying to bust up a ring of hillbilly moonshiners. One of the hillbillies is sweet on the chief moonshiner’s daughter. He tries to kiss her but she fights him off. Her father says, “Time enough for hitting him after you’re married!” She declares, “I will never marry that gorilla!” The father begins to spank her. Arbuckle sees this and comes between them, then he says to the girl, “How dare you treat your father that way!” then he chokes her for a while, lifts her over his head and tosses her in the lake. When she emerges from the water, she says to Arbuckle, “I love you!” and they begin to kiss. “The father says, “Wait a minute! You beat up my daughter and then she says she loves you? What’s going on?” Arbuckle turns from kissing the girl and explains, “This is only a two reeler and so we don’t have time to build up to a big love scene.” The father says, “Well, it’s your movie!” Later, Arbuckle is captured by the moonshiners and they decide to throw him in the cellar, but the cellar is a drawing room with really nice furniture and a bar.

Molasses Hat

           

            I spent a lot of Sunday reading Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons”. It’s not a complicated story but it’s a bit tedious because it goes into a lot of detail about sailing, and no real adventure occurs for the first hundred pages. It’s very realistic, except for the idea that four siblings would get along so well together.

            In the evening I rode north under a speckled sky. The speckles headed west, so once I was also riding in that direction the clouds didn’t look speckled. I finished exploring the area south and west of Bayview and Moore. Returning westward along Moore, the sky was scattered with pink and gold fire. By the time I was back on St Clair though the fire had extinguished and all that were left after sunset were ashes coloured clouds. It was almost dark as I rode west on Queen, with just some patches of dark cloud against the deep blue of the horizon.

            I watched the Roscoe Arbuckle film, “The Butcher Boy”, which co-starred Buster Keaton in what was apparently his film debut. It was certainly not his performance debut though, since he’d been in Vaudeville with his parents since he was a child. The film again consisted of a collection of situations, some of which were centred around Arbuckle’s job in a store. One involved Buster Keaton coming in with a bucket to buy molasses. He dropped a coin in the bucket and handed it to Arbuckle. Arbuckle filled the bucket and then asked for the money, but of course the money was in the bucket. Keaton, while waiting for his molasses, was in another part of the store watching some old men play checkers, but he had left his hat on the counter. Arbuckle, needing a place to pour the molasses in order to get the coin, dumps it into Keaton’s hat, retrieves the coin and then pours the molasses back into the bucket. Of course the slapstick begins when Buster puts the now sticky hat on his head.

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.