A Family Dinner at Om

           

            On Saturday I got up at 4:00 because I had gone to bed earlier than usual. I decided to take advantage of the extra hour to satisfy my curiosity as to whether the bedbugs were finally gone. In the doorframe all I found was the greasy corpse of a bedbug that strangely didn’t even give off a bedbug odour. I moved my mattress to check the baseboards, and in the corner that corresponds to the top left of my bed I found a live bedbug that was black inside. A little further along the baseboard though I killed one that had fresh blood inside of it. A little further down there was another sick one, but about halfway I crushed a large one that was red inside. I searched the whole room and that’s all I found but if there were healthy ones there might also be eggs. I vacuumed the area before I started my yoga. I felt a little discouraged about there still being bedbugs but I guess I should feel encouraged that I haven’t seen any crawling out in the open for two weeks. Hopefully they won’t repopulate drastically before the next treatment on December 4.

            At around 9:00 about six fire trucks wailed their way frantically along Queen, turning in front of my place as they so often do to park in front of 245 Dunn Avenue. It seems to me that they should just set up a fire station on the main floor of building to save time, traffic and noise.

            I went down to the foodbank at 10:00 to stand in line in the cold rain, and after locking my bike, I walked back to the end of the line just as a big middle aged bleached blond woman and a slightly less large bushy haired middle aged man of Indian descent took the place in front of me. They were both smokers who lit up almost immediately. They didn’t look like they’d be that receptive to being asked politely to step out of line while they were smoking, so I just stepped back, almost out of range of the smoke, hugging myself in the cold. They swayed from side to side as they talked as they smoked, with her doing most of the talking. I wondered how many tobacco company executives are millionaires just from sales to poor people alone. I went back behind them when they had finished their cigarettes and then away when they lit up again. They were each on their third cigarette when the line started moving, but I stayed to the side and waited until they were done. When I took my place again, the woman mumbled something about me butting in ahead of the frail old guy with the walker and the fedora, even though he knew I was ahead of him. I guess one can’t step out of line to avoid jeopardizing one’s health without getting accused of butting ahead of someone.

I got number twenty-four and went home. I came back at 11:00 only to find that they don’t open until 11:30. I guess I knew and had forgotten that fact. I went home again for a few minutes and on the way out I met Sundar, the building superintendent. He’s moved out but he said he’d still be managing the building. I had been told that he’d moved into the cockroach heaven of the West Lodge Apartments at the top of O’Hara, but he said he’d gotten into a seniors residence. “You’re a senior?” I asked with surprise. He nodded and confirmed, “I’m sixty.” I said, “I’m sixty too!” and then wondered if he’d though I’d said, “I’m 62!” but I didn’t clarify. He said that the hospital helped him get in because of his health problems. He said he’s happy with the new place and I believed him.

When I got back to the foodbank I noticed that the guy who’d been behind me in line with the walker was already coming out with some bags of food. It turns out that the foodbank decided to open early, perhaps because of the rain. I went right in. There wasn’t really much this time around. They had some packages of green pea crisps, which I’d never seen there before. In addition to the usual pasta there was something that I thought was rice and picked it up but the volunteer said that it wasn’t rice, though no one there knew what it was. She suggested it might be tapioca. There was no rice other than packaged rice dish products. I was disappointed that there was no cereal. In the cold section there was sour cream, some frozen beef patties, and some slices of pizza in plastic bags, probably left over from all the pizza they’ve been giving out over the last two weeks. The bread was of a better quality this time around and I took a couple of whole grain loaves that looked relatively fresh.

I spent the rest of the day chipping away at my essay until the evening.

My daughter, Astrid and her fiancé, Lauren arrived in town the day before and she invited me out to dinner Saturday night. I thought it might be nice to give Lauren another Toronto food experience that might not be as readily available in Montreal, so we decided to go to a Tibetan restaurant in my neighbourhood. Astrid called me from Lansdowne and Queen and said they’d meet me at my front door. It turned out they had walked from Lansdowne subway station and stopped at the No Frills along the way. When I came out she handed me two grocery bags full of food. I don’t know if she did this consciously but most of Astrid’s food selections for me were the same kinds of groceries I used to buy when she was living with me. There was also a case of lemon soda. I took the bags back up stairs and then the three of us walked to the Om Restaurant just past Lansdowne. I remember the location back when it was a West Indian bar back in the late 80s. Om has a pleasant atmosphere and the walls are done in warm orange earth tones, with nice, mostly traditional Tibetan art on the walls. This atmosphere is interrupted though by the television hanging down from the ceiling and which looks about as appropriate as a mobile made of electrified razor blades hanging down into a crib. I had the chilli chicken and a Moosehead. They ordered a platter, which featured a selection of Asian appetizers such as spring rolls and samosas, and I think for an entrée they had the shaptak, which is sautéed beef with green chillies. Lauren couldn’t finish hers because she’s not used to that much meat, so I took it home. Mine was very spicy, but I liked it. It was wonderful to catch up with my daughter on her life in Montreal over a pleasant meal in a pleasant place. We’re planning on getting together again before they leave on Monday.

Later, I was at home and I heard a woman screaming angry words. I looked out my window and saw she was screaming at a young man. Then she suddenly slapped him and walked away while he walked off in the other direction seemingly unaffected by the assault.  A few minutes later I heard screaming again. They both must have walked back from the directions they had gone, because they were standing on the same corner as before. This time I could make out some of what she was screaming in the rain: “Your wife! Your wife! Your wife! That’s all you ever think about! What about me?” Later things had calmed down and she was merely talking loud as they walked, I assume to her place, since it’s the direction she had stormed previously after slapping him.

I did some writing for a while, but felt very tired about two hours before I would normally go to bed and without exercising good oral hygiene, I flopped into bed and went to sleep right away.

Arguing with the Traffic Light

           

            I spent some time on Friday working on my essay. It’s starting to pull together, but it seems there’s never a day when I have three hours to pour into it. I went to teach my yoga class and I was surprised when an actual student showed up. It was a woman who I think came once to my Sunday class about three years ago.

            On my way home, I was standing across the street from my place waiting for the walk signal. A late middle-aged guy who I see almost every day was standing at the other side. He always wears bright coloured tracksuits with matching hats, either in yellow, red or a combination of the two. He started shouting at the light as he was waiting, “Come on light! Change! Why don’t you change? I want a little change in the afternoon!”

            That night my landlord came to my door to tell me he couldn’t get an appointment with the exterminator until December 4. When I had told him last week that I was only available on Monday or Friday this week, he misunderstood that I meant that Mondays and Fridays were my only options any week. It may not be a panic. Eight days ago, the last time I searched for bedbugs, I was only able to find two live ones by digging them out of crevices in the doorframe, and neither of those were very healthy. I haven’t seen any crawling but I’d better do another search soon to add more evidence to my theory that they are gone.

            I watched the second episode of Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. The aliens steal Cody’s spaceship and try to use it to take uranium from Earth to their home planet so they could build a fleet of ships like Cody’s. He uses his rocket suit to intercept them. They capture him and tie his hands but he manages to sabotage his ship so they needed him to fix it. He tricks them into surrendering. They try one more time to physically overwhelm him while the ship is spinning out of control, though for some reason they aren’t being tossed around inside the ship. Cody knocks them out and lands the ship just in time.

Sky Marshal of the Universe

           

            In Children’s Literature class on Thursday, we spent the whole hour discussing Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “A Little Princess”, whose publication history spanned the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the Edwardian. It began as a magazine serial in one period and finally emerged as a novel in the next. Professor Baker didn’t really lecture this time, but rather engaged us to give our impressions of the story. We compared it to Cinderella. The mean headmistress of the school takes the place of the wicked stepmother and her two favourite students represent Cinderella’s evil stepsisters. The magical transformations of “A Little Princess” are not supernatural, but are nonetheless fantastic. Both are stories of unjust oppression featuring an undervalued heroine with high beginnings to which she returns. Both girls have no mothers at the beginning and lose their fathers early on. Both girls are forced into a life of drudgery. In both stories a man of great wealth seeks the girls out, though they differ in that Sara, of “A Little Princess” is younger and still in need of parental protection so when she is found she is adopted. Both Sara and Cinderella are exceptionally good girls, though Sara shows some slightly more realistic flashes of ego. She is also shown to be unusually intelligent and creative. The moral of both stories is that graciousness is priceless, and without it, nothing is possible; but one must also have intelligence, courage, good breeding, and common sense. In both cases though there is also help from some higher source. Sara’s equivalent to the fairy godmother is Ram Dass, the Indian servant of the wealthy man who is trying to find her. I doubt if it would be considered appropriate in the modern era to have a man watching a young girl constantly in her bedroom through a skylight and claiming that he’s looking out for her best interests.

            Cinderella, in some versions had to live in a basement but in “A Little Princess” the attic is ironically the place in the house where lowest servants were forced to live.

            In some ways the story has more in common with Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”.

            After class I went to Canada Computers to buy another flashdrive, as my old one has mysteriously disappeared. Maybe it will turn up though when I start putting my place back in order, if indeed the bedbugs are proven to be gone as seems to be the case.

            I watched the first episode of the 1955 series, “Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe”. Humanoid aliens have begun to attack the Earth, but to avoid mass hysteria; the government is keeping it a secret while they mount a defence. Commando Cody, a master scientist and a two fisted warrior, has been made the leader of the Earth’s defensive forces. He hires two scientists to assist him, and I was surprised to see that one of them was played by William Schallert, who went on to play the fathers of the two cousins on the Patty Duke Show. In the first episode, “Enemies of the Universe” the aliens, who basically look like regular gangsters and fight with fists, bullets and the odd hand grenade, first try to uncover Cody’s plans to fight them. He has already shielded the planet with a layer of radioactive cosmic dust, which somehow prevents the alien rockets from breaking through. They find the map to an abandoned mining town called Graphite, which is where Cody and his crew plan to set up operations for an undisclosed project. Somehow the aliens manage to set up a secret base inside the walls of Cody’s lab in Graphite and they spy on him through the cut out eyes of the photograph on the wall of a cowboy. When they learn that Cody is building an interplanetary spaceship they send a message to their leader on the home world. Their leader, wearing a comical costume of robes and headgear with earflaps and who of course has a Russian accent, tells them they must destroy the spaceship at all costs.  They first try to set it on fire, but Cody stops them. Then they plant a bomb that is supposed to go off as soon as the ship reaches a certain altitude. Then Cody and Schallert as Tim take the ship for a test run. Meanwhile though they capture the female scientist who activates the badge that Cody gave her, which is a two-way communication device. She is able to let Cody overhear the alien plans before he reaches the height that would cause the bomb to go off. Cody puts on his rocket suit and flies to rescue his assistant and defeat her captors. It was entertaining. I had actually thought I’d only downloaded an episode but it turns out I have the whole season.

Badgers and Coyotes

           

            Wednesday was the first day in nine months that I’ve had to work at OCADU for an 8:30 class. I got up 5:00 though and had time to play guitar for half an hour and even make coffee.

I worked for Terry Shofner’s class. He’s one of the few instructors who actually engages me in conversation whenever I work for him and is interested in hearing about my university classes.

I was scheduled to work that afternoon from 15:10 to 18:10, and I would have normally had time to ride home and sleep for a while, but my professor has her office hours from 14:00 to 16:00 and I wanted to get some feedback on my essay, so I wanted to be there half an hour early to guarantee I’d be the first one to see her so I could get to work on time afterward. I decided to go to the models lounge to try to sleep there. I rested for a while with my feet on a chair and the chair’s cushion against the wall behind my head, but I couldn’t really sleep. I plugged in my laptop and read some more of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “A Little Princess”. She really was a pretty good writer, especially in some of her descriptive writing. I’m about two-thirds of the way through. In the movie, Sara’s father returns after being incapacitated for all the years his daughter lived in poverty. In the real story, it looks like her father is really dead and it’s her father’s partner, who had been thought to have run off with his money, was the one who had been incapacitated. He’s made it his life’s goal to track down his partner’s daughter and to give her her father’s share of the fortune he made. He still doesn’t realize though that he is living next door to the school where Sara is trapped in the life of a drudge.

As I’d planned, I was by far the first student there for Professor Baker’s office hours. She spent fourty minutes looking at and talking about my essay. She likes a lot of my ideas about the use of talking animals in literature; even the one about “otherness”, which I wasn’t sure wasn’t a little bit tacky. I was telling her that otherness inspires sympathy more than sameness and that it can be seen not only with animals, but also in aliens and androids as presented in science fictions stories. She didn’t agree with me at first but in the middle of reading my essay she told me that I was right about robots. She reminded me that I have to steer clear of absolute statements and just stick with the material at hand. There was also the obvious fact that the essay needs to be organized, but I didn’t even really consider what I showed her to be a first draft yet.

While researching coyotes, to try to see how many natural characteristics fit with Thomas King’s character of Coyote, I came across some interesting information that I shared with Professor Baker. Apparently, Coyotes form amicable relationships with badgers in the wild because they help each other dig for rodents. Coyotes have been seen snuggling up to badgers and even licking their faces. I would imagine that if they can get the badgers to like them the coyotes wouldn’t have to do as much of the digging. Sort of like, “You’re a wonderful little badger and I like you very much! Thanks for the rat!”

I asked her to reassess my first essay and she told me my TA had already let her know that I would probably make that request. She said she would read my electronic submission.

I also asked her if she would sometime offer me a critique of the only children’s story I think I’ve ever written. She said she would if I was sure I could handle it, so it was arranged that I would email it to her in January.

It was lucky that I was her first visitor because when I walked out of her office I had just half an hour to get to work. There were at least five or six people waiting in the hall to see her when I left. None of them looked all that happy to have been waiting for so long. I don’t know if she spent so much time with me because my essay was particularly interesting or if it’s just that she kind of lives in a dream world where time doesn’t exist like a lot of people from the west coast. Even though her office hours are only for two hours, I’m sure she stayed until everyone had had a chance to consult with her.

I worked for Sara Sniderhan from mid-afternoon to evening. Her hello at the beginning and her thank you at the end were stiff and businesslike but she seemed a bit warmer in the midst of the class. She’s probably just shy, and covers it up with a cold veneer.

When I left work it was dark and raining. I passed the sax player who I see busking a lot at the corner of Spadina, but he was about a block east of the corner where the sidewalk is very wide. He has longish hair, swept back from a well-receded hairline and he looked and sounded good playing the sax intro from Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” in the rain. He was playing it way too quickly though.

That night I watched the fourth episode of “Cheyenne”. It was a lame, formulaic story about going to a town across the Mexican border to bring back a bandit. The bad guy and his men run the town and have robbed it of its spirit. Cheyenne and Smitty take on the badguys by themselves, inspiring the men of the town to rise up to help them. Again, it was stiffly written and poorly acted. This show blew its chance with me and so I deleted the whole file.

Spoon Face

           

            On Tuesday as I was leaving for class, a couple of older women were smoking and talking in front of the Coffeetime near the “O’Hara Garden” at the corner. She said hello to me and I recognized her. She asked if I knew who she was. I said I did. She challenged me to tell her though. I recognized her as the vegetable lady from the foodbank. She declared, “Your good! Most people don’t recognize me without my bandana!”

We spent the entire two hours of Children’s Literature class talking about George MacDonald’s “The Princess and the Goblin”. MacDonald’s life as a writer corresponded to Victoria’s reign as queen of Britain. He was a Congregationalist minister but the church let him go because he preached that all faiths eventually unite with god. His books fell under the old definition of the romance novel. He had eleven children and was a deeply engaged father. An annual event in the family was a staged drama, such as a Shakespeare play, in which all of the children would perform. He believed that children were an important part of any adult’s self understanding and this was tied with his approach to theology in that he saw god as a nurturing father as opposed to a ruling king. He felt the same about both the appreciation of and the making of art and that art was a lens that brought us closer to god. He thought that there was no difference between the waking world and the world of dreams, except that dreams are just a more powerfully charged reality, a glimpse of spiritual reality, which is too intense to experience except in diluted form. His thinking was influenced by German romantics such as Goethe, who strove to combine philosophical thinking with the aesthetic experience of art. MacDonald strove with his writing not to convey meaning but rather to wake it in a personal way for the reader. He tried to convey moral teaching without a particular lesson. He was the mentor of Lewis Carroll, who was a friend of the family and took many photographs of MacDonald’s children, in particular, his young daughters. It was because his readings of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” were such a hit with MacDonald’s children that he was encouraged to publish it.

            “The Princess and the Goblin” contains many elements of popular fairy tales. Every aspect of the story, every colour and object described and everything that is done has spiritual symbolism behind it. The magical grandmother alludes to the femininity of the human soul. There are three tiers to the story: the upper regions of light, the lower realms of darkness and the middle ground where the Peterson family live, their house perhaps representing the Christian church. Unlike traditional fairy tales, feminine curiosity is valued and rewarded, rather than punished.

            Aristocracy is presented as being more about behaviour rather than genetics.

            The grandmother challenges the conventions of age, and Professor Baker compared her to Lady Philosophy in Boethius’s “Consolation of Philosophy” who “drives away the Muses of poetry”. Another comparison was made with Lady Wisdom from the book of Proverbs.

            C.S. Lewis said of George MacDonald’s “Phantastes” that it baptized his imagination.

            On my way home I stopped at Freshco. The young woman who often works the express check-out these days looks the way an ordinary pretty girl would look if her face was reflected on the back of a spoon.

            As I approached my place there was a guy walking and talking amicably on his hands free phone: “Just stop! Stop! Stop it! Just stop! Just stop! Just stop!”

            In front of my place, Sue, from the foodbank was talking loudly with someone. She said hi to me, and when a guy who she also must have known came by with a walker, she shouted, “Give me that!”

            I watched the third episode of Cheyenne. This one had a much better story. Two guys on their way to meet their partner to prospect a gold mine discover the guy with the map dead. Cheyenne shows up and guides them to the mine after being promised a cut. All the gold is in dust but they find a lot of it. One of the men starts going crazy with greed and keeps thinking the others are after his gold while he’s at the same time thinking about taking theirs. They get attacked by renegades but some soldiers chase them off. They know the Natives will be back and that winter will be coming soon so they decide to leave and cash in, with about $30,000 each. One night some Natives approach their campfire to ask for help with the sick wife of a chief. Cheyenne goes to help them and asks his partners to take care of his gold. The next night the crazy partner goes crazier, thinking that if he doesn’t kill his partner his partner will kill him. He guns him down and leaves him but he’s still alive. The Natives find him take him to Cheyenne, then they both go after the crazy guy. The guy with the gold is at a watering hole when the renegades come, looking for bullets. They think the bags of gold dust are full of bullets. The guy tries to stop them and gets killed. As a wind storm picks up, the natives cut open every bag looking for bullets. The gold means nothing to them and so it all blows away in the wind. I liked this episode enough to give the show one more chance.

Are the Higher Prices of Medical batteries a Scam?

           

            I had to work on Monday afternoon at OCADU, so I had a little sleep first. I posed for Nick Aoki’s class. He’s a fast talking, cool sounding young guy who’s been teaching at OCADU for about ten years. He’s actually the only art instructor that I’ve seen in a bar outside the context of the school, at least since the Beverly Tavern closed down back in the 80s. He came with some friends to the Tranzac during the Monday night open stage a couple of years ago.

            After work I went to Shoppers Drug Mart to buy batteries for my bike’s red flasher and my guitar tuner, which both take CR2032 3V batteries. When I finally found the battery shelf, the CR2032s had a space but they didn’t seem to be in stock. I inquired at the drug counter and the pharmacist paged someone for me. He led me to another shelf that also had batteries and the kind I wanted were there. On the shelf near the drug counter the price for the batteries would have been $8.99 but these were $6.99. The employee explained that the more expensive ones were medical, but that didn’t explain what there was about them that made them worth more. Someone on an online forum suggested that medical batteries might be more stringently tested to guarantee longer life, but I wonder if they’re exactly the same.

            I stood on the sidewalk in front of my bike under the streetlight, fumbling to change the batteries on my flasher. I had to use my jackknife to pry the old batteries out and to cut open the battery packages. Then when I put the batteries in the flasher, they didn’t work. I pried the batteries back out and peeled off the stickers that tell you not to swallow the batteries and that have the image of a diapered baby with a red line through it, which I guess means that babies could be harmful to the batteries so keep them away. Once the stickers were off, the flasher worked.

            I watched the second episode of Cheyenne and it was just as bad as the first. Clint Walker is as stiff as everyone’s dialogue and all of the action choreography. Even seasoned guest actor Ray Teal who played Sheriff Roy Coffee for years on Bonanza, couldn’t save it. It’s interesting how when a good actor is surrounded by bad actors and bad production values he or she just phones it in as well. I’ll give this show one more chance before deleting it.

Unfriending

           

            When I logged onto Facebook late Sunday morning I noticed that I’d lost a friend overnight. I suspected right away that it was Heather Babcock that had unfriended me because I had written a comment the night before in response to a post she had made on November eleventh that Remembrance Day is not a glorification of war but rather a way of honouring those who had fought in the wars that the leaders had made. I argued that as long as there is no equal day to commemorate the civilian victims of war then Remembrance Day is indeed a glorification of war. Deciding to no longer be friends with me was an interesting response to a philosophical difference. It’s not a choice I would have made but it made me think that I wish I could wake up and find that my apartment had cleaned itself of things I don’t need in the same way that Facebook does.

            On Sunday I had a choice between doing laundry and buying underwear because if I didn’t do one or the other I wouldn’t have briefs to wear on Monday. Since I didn’t want to take up a lot of essay writing time, I rode up Brock Avenue to the back of Walmart. I always go in that way because there’s a place to lock my bike near the door and it’s a less busy entrance. The first thing I saw when I walked into the mall was a fake snow covered Christmas tree that had been put up way too early. I guess it’s supposed to remind shoppers to do their Christmas shopping early but I would rather not see Yule decorations for another month.

            I noticed on the outside of Walmart there is a lawyer’s ad offering personal wills for $99.99. I have no idea how much wills usually cost, but that sounds cheap. I spent $18.05 on six pairs of Hanes. I timed my trip to and from the mall. It would have taken at least ninety minutes to do my laundry and so I saved fourty minutes and got some underwear.

            I continued to work on my essay. I think I’m making progress. I’ve got six pages of the required seven and I’m hoping that I’ll have a first draft to take to my professor on Wednesday to get some feedback. I still have just over a week before it needs to be handed in.

            I watched the first episode of the first season of Cheyenne. To see a bad premier like this really does show just how good Bonanza was. Clint Walker played a scout raised by Natives. He travels with a mapmaker from Texas named Johnny as they ride around making geographic sense of the west. The Shoshone are on the warpath and attack a stagecoach. Cheyenne and Johnny help some white guys fight the Natives off but the white guys turn out to have been planning on robbing the stage themselves. Cheyenne has to help the bandits, as they are holed up on some rocks while the Shoshone attack. It wasn’t much of a plot, and Clint Walker, though a good-looking giant, showed no emotion through the whole story. I’ve downloaded the whole first season, but if the next two episodes are as bad as this one I’ll delete the file and move on to something else.