It Was Hard Not to Cry a Little

           

            On Sunday I packed up my guitar, printed up a few things that Paul Valliere had emailed me, and headed for the Native Canadian Centre on Spadina, north of Bloor. I hadn’t been there for thirty years. I used to go back in the 80s because my girlfriend at the time, Whitefeather, often went there to see social workers or to hang out when she wasn’t drinking. On a few occasions I participated in ceremonies there, such as dancing in a circle to the drum. I remember attending an AA meeting once in which a Native guy was doing a testimonial and telling us about the humorous way his parents used to argue. His father would say to his mother, “The only way you ever got me was because you used Indian magic on me!” to which she would reply, “The only Indian magic I ever used on you was between my legs!” When they’re not making bad puns, the humour native people tend to prefer is pretty risqué.

            When I arrived, Paul’s daughter Alison was there, setting up a table. I was introduced to three of Paul’s pre-adoption brothers of the Valyear family. They confirmed for me my thought that Vayear must be an Anglicization of Valliere. Valliere probably should also have an accent grave to make it Vallière.

            I found a seat on the right side of the centre aisle at the front and started tuning my guitar. Kathleen Zinck came, as well as Ursula and Cad Gold Jr. Paul’s daughter Rosalind arrived with her daughter, Otayo. She seemed pretty sad for obvious reasons, but she held herself together for the most part to officiate over the event. She introduced me to her Native elder at York, Philip Cote, who told me, “You look familiar! Have you ever posed for art classes?” It turns out that he drew me at OCADU when he was a student in the 80s and then when he returned to finish his degree in the 90s. I said to Rosalind, “He’s seen me naked, and you haven’t!” She said, “My father just entered the room!”

            As the event began Rosalind introduced Philip, who started things off with a Lakota Cree prayer and then did a smudge ceremony with a braided rope of bundled herbs. I could definitely smell sage and it had a pleasant aroma. He walked around with it and waved it around everyone’s heads and chests. The idea is that the smoke connects everyone in the room so they will be on the same psychological and emotional page for the event. Philip said beforehand that if anyone didn’t want to be smudged they didn’t have to be. I was pretty sure I knew one person that would refuse, and sure enough, Cad waved Philip away. Cad was the only one in the room that didn’t want to be connected.

            Rosalind did a tearful tribute to her father while reading some of his poetry and excerpts from his Maritime road diary written this past summer.

            Next, Paul’s daughter Alison came to the microphone. She had two pieces she had wanted to do, but couldn’t hold herself together to read the first, so her mother read it for her. Then with both Rosalind and her mother holding her on either side, Alison read in a wavering voice a poem she’d written for her dad. I think the whole audience was probably crying at that point.

            Then Paul’s son Daniel got up and talked about how his father had helped him get started in the chimney business and how he was always there for him. He was weeping before he was done as well.

            Rosalind then called up Paul’s poetry mentor and friend, Jack Livesley, who was the only one that didn’t tear up but nonetheless gave a heartfelt tribute. He said that they had a running joke between them in which Paul would say, “When I grow up I wanna be like you!” and to which Jack would reply, “I haven’t grown up yet because I want to be like you!”

            Paul’s ex-girlfriend, Vickie, who had met back in the 90s, also gave a tribute. Although they had not been lovers for years, they had still remained friends.

            Rosalind’s daughter, a gorgeous child of about six, was lifted twice during the evening to the microphone because she wanted to sing a song about world peace in a language that I didn’t recognize, but it might have been in a Native tongue.

            Rosalind said that there would be a chance for more people to get up and read something, but first they would eat. She said that, in the Native tradition, elders are served by younger people, so she suggested that those under fifty should bring a plate of food to someone that is over fifty before they get a plate for themselves. A young woman that was there with Paul’s neighbour, Dave, offered to serve me, but I told her I had to go to the washroom first. When I came back though, no one offered, so I went to the unattended beverage table and drank some cranberry juice. Maybe it was a compliment that no one else offered to serve me. Perhaps I don’t look like I’m over fifty. Cad and I spoke to Paul’s friends, Star Spider and her husband, Ben Badger. Star is probably in her thirties and dresses with a flamboyant Punk aesthetic. Her running shoes, for example, had multiple wings coming out from the ankles. We tried a drink with conifer leaves floating in it and it tasted like something one would spread on an infection. Cad liked the way Ben was dressed, but Star said she was responsible for his couture.

            After the meal, we sat down for the open stage portion of the event. Kathleen Zinck read a poem for Paul, as did Star Spider. Star’s poem, “The Last Dreamer”, included the lines “a future so green your appendix is rediscovered, and the verdant taste of chlorophyll traces a winding garden path through the dark corners of your mind … “I feel safer knowing you’re out there,” you once told me, and I said I felt the same about you. I mean it still …”

            A few other people read things of Paul’s.

            I was the last person up on the open stage. I performed my song “The Next State of Grace”, and though I screwed up the chords coming out of the instrumental, the group seemed to find it moving.

“Well I’m sitting here cooking in the stew of the street,

I’m the part that won’t ever get stirred

And as I am boiling I drink my own broth

And bend noodles to the shape of these words

Oh when oh when will I ever learn?

I can’t get to heaven with wheels that don’t turn

I’ve got no ambition and that’s a disgrace

Guess I’ll sit here and wait for the next state of grace.

Well I’m dug down so deep in the trench of my heart

I can’t seem to climb back out again

And my voice is so distant it can hardly be heard

By the women who pass in the rain

Oh when oh when will I ever learn?

I can’t drive a girl home with wheels that don’t turn

I’m buried with pride when I try to save face

Guess I’ll sit here and wait for the next state of grace.

And my mind hangs above this emotional wreck

Like a scavenger looking for parts

And it lives in a mansion that’s built from the sweat

Of my tar paper third world heart

Oh when oh when will I ever learn

I’ll freeze here on Earth with a heart that can’t burn

So I’m biding my time here as fate’s welfare case

While I line up and wait for the next state of grace.”

            I finished with a poem that Paul had sent me by email. It wasn’t one of his own but it was one by Peter Handke that he said deeply moved him and I recognized it as the opening monologue from the Wim Wenders film, “Wings of Desire”, which I told them is one of my top five films of all time. I caught myself tearing up from time to time while I was reading it:

“When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging.
It wanted the stream to be a river
the river a torrent
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child
It didn't know it was a child.
Everything was full of life, and all life was one.

When the child was a child
It had no opinions about anything.
It had no habits.
It sat cross-legged, took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair
and didn't make a face when photographed.

When the child was a child
it was the time of these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Isn't life under the sun just a dream?
Isn't what I see, hear and smell
only the illusion of a world before the world?
Does evil actually exist,
and are there people who are really evil?
How can it be that I, who am I,
didn't exist before I came to be
and that someday
the one who I am
will no longer be the one I am?

When the child was a child
it choked on spinach, peas, rice pudding
and on steamed cauliflower.
Now it eats all of those
and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child
it once woke up in a strange bed
and now it does so time and time again.
Many people seemed beautiful then
and now only a few, if it's lucky.
It had a precise picture of Paradise
and now it can only guess at it.
It could not conceive of nothingness
and today it shudders at the idea.

When the child was a child
it played with enthusiasm
and now
it gets equally excited
but only when it concerns
its work.

When the child was a child
berries fell into its hand as only berries do
and they still do now.
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw
and they still do now.
On every mountaintop it had a longing
for yet a higher mountain.
And in each city it had a longing
for yet a bigger city.
And it is still that way.
It reached for the cherries in the treetop
with the elation it still feels today.
It was shy with all strangers
and it still is.
It awaited the first snow
and it still waits that way.

When the child was a child
it threw a stick into a tree like a lance,
and it still quivers there today.”

            Before closing things down though, a couple of Paul’s nephews came up to the mic. One of them, who had a black eye that he said he’d got recently from being punched by about eight guys, read an email that he’d received recently from Paul. The other, a headbanger with long wavy blond hair and a short beard, said something about Paul being the most awesome uncle a guy could have.

            Kathleen told me that some of them were going for a drink and asked if I’d like to join them. I invited Cad as well, so Kathleen, Vickie (Paul’s ex girlfriend), Ursula, Jack Cad and myself all went looking for a pub. I realized while unlocking my bike, that I’d forgotten my gloves, so I caught up with them and asked what pub they were going to. They decided on the Madison, which was pretty much next door, so I said I’d meet them there. I couldn’t find the entrance on Spadina so I rode around the block to Madison Avenue and went in. I looked through every one of the many rooms on both floors, but couldn’t find them. I was starting to think they’d ditched me when I went back into a room I’d checked before and they were just arriving. Ursula explained that it’s very slow walking with an elderly man that uses a cane. 

            I had a pint of Tankhouse, Cad had a glass of ice water and everyone else shared a bottle of wine. We discussed Paul’s last days and the health complaints he’d been experiencing, such as stomach pains and panic attacks. All I knew was that he told me in a hoarse voice on the Tuesday before he died that he wasn’t feeling well. His mind had been as sharp as ever and he seemed glad that I called and was looking forward to our next get together. Ursula and Vickie said that if his doctor had read the symptoms properly he would have sent him to the hospital and he might still be alive. There are really only a couple of natural things that could cause someone to suddenly die in their chair. It would have to have been either a heart attack or an aneurysm.

            Vickie told me about the couple of times that Paul had taken her to my reading series. She said it wasn’t her thing because everyone at the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy looked so depressed. I remember that Jack had come as well a couple of times. I don’t think that Paul knew Ursula or Kathleen back then.

            Cad was sitting a couple of table lengths away from us because the only available seats were stools, which weren’t as comfortable as the seat at the edge of a booth that he’d taken. Ursula started trying to direct people to all move their things and slide over to make room for Cad. I suggested that maybe she should first ask Cad if he wants to move before she got everyone else to move. After Jack, Vickie and Kathleen had all moved their coats and things and slid over, Cad reluctantly moved to the far end of our group, next to Kathleen. I laughed and commented that after all that effort and trouble, Cad was only one meter closer than he had been in the first place. Cad agreed that it wasn’t much closer and Ursula did not feel that her crowd control skills for the sake of unity were much appreciated.

            I also clashed a bit with Ursula on the subject of the police. She declared that there are some good cops while I interjected that her assertion was absolutely false. I said that it’s in police DNA to be an asshole. She said that her grandfather had been a policeman and he was a wonderful man. I said that good actions are meaningless and that even when police officers don’t commit atrocities themselves, every one of them will justify or dismiss the actions of the others. I’ve never heard a single cop, for example, stand up and argue that handcuffing fourteen-year-old children is wrong. They will go to whatever lengths that are allowed to them, plus a little more, to protect the property of the rich.

            Ursula left before the rest of us. I think she was going to the ceremony to commemorate the Montreal Polytechnique massacre at Philosophers Walk.

            Vickie said goodbye at the corner of Madison and Bloor, then walked back to St George to make her way back to Pickering.

            Kathleen lingered at Spadina and Bloor to see Jack onto the shuttle bus.

            Cad and I walked to Christie where he realized that he couldn’t continue to Ossington to catch his bus because the subway station wasn’t open. He said that he would head back to Bathurst but first he was going to rest. As I got on my bike he told me “I’m gonna sit on this bench and talk to Paul.”

The Dollarama Deserves Shoplifters

           

            On Saturday I spent a lot of time going through the Word file I’d made out of my email exchanges with Paul Valliere. I was able to turn the 133-page file into 80 pages by reformatting everything, but unfortunately I had to do it line by line because his emails came through much narrower than a normal Word document. They were also often centred but wouldn’t obey selecting them all and left aligning them.

            The bulb in my reading lamp blew out, so I went over to the Dollarama and bought four bulbs for $2.50 that were supposed to last a year. The little cashier, of East Asian descent, seemed particularly friendly to me. When I got home, before I could put a new bulb in the lamp I needed to remove the threaded part of the blown out bulb, which required pliers and light.  I haven’t had a working bulb in the ceiling of my living room for several months, so I went out to the hall to get my landlord’s ladder and used it to install one of the four bulbs. It took a few minutes to unscrew the broken bulb, but when I screwed in a new bulb it burned out immediately. I tried a second new one but it didn’t work at all. Finally the third new bulb worked and I once again had light for reading, but it’s criminal that Dollarama has a no return, no exchange policy. They can just sell you crap that doesn’t work and make millions doing it. If any store ever deserved shoplifters it’s the Dollarama.

            I watched the fourth episode of Radar Men from the Moon, “Flight to Destruction”. The cliffhanger from the previous episode had been that Commando Cody, while pursuing the Earth gangsters that are working for the Moon’s invasion force, is crossing a bridge when they blow it up. At the beginning of this episode they show that he had rolled out of the car beforehand. The aliens and the gangsters decide to kidnap Commando Cody because he’s important to the government and they need money to build another atomic raygun. Since they can’t find Cody they kidnap Joan in order to lure Cody. She’s being flown in a small plane by the kidnapper, somehow she’s had a full change of clothes, when Cody is about to catch up to them. The kidnapper wrecks the controls and jumps out with a parachute, leaving Joan in the back. Cody catches up and climbs on board just before the plane crashes into a mountain.

The Worthless Toonie Blues

           

 
            Friday was the first time in a month that I was scheduled to have the exterminator come. After getting my place ready I took some time to thoroughly check the doorframe and the baseboards in my bedroom and was relieved that I didn’t find a single bedbug.

            The Orkin guy came at noon, which was an hour later than usual. He surprised me by saying I didn’t have to leave the apartment this time because they no longer use poison against the bedbugs. Now they have some kind of dust that fatally scratches them when they crawl over it. I later did a search and came across pyrethroid dust an extremely effective bedbug killer, so maybe that’s what this is. It was nice not to have to breathe poison for a change. He also told me that if I smell bedbugs it means they are dying.

            I took my neighbour’s empties to the beer store and got about six dollars. The plan had been to do my laundry after that but time would have been tight for teaching my yoga class directly afterwards, so I decided I’d do laundry after yoga.

            I heard a woman crying loudly below my window and thought that I recognized her voice. It was a person that often panhandles on Queen Street. I looked outside and saw that she was talking to a middle-aged guy with an African accent, who was standing in front of her with a cane. He had just given her a Toonie but she was still standing with her hand open as if it were empty, even though the two-dollar coin was big and shiny in her hand. “C’mooohn!” she cried, with her face twisted in agony “What am I supposed to do with this? Haven’t you got five dollars?” Calm, but confused, the man told her, “I don’t have any more money!” “C’mooohn! What did you give me this for? This is nothing! I can’t do anything with this!” He finally held out his hand and said, “Give it back then!” She still had her hand with the Toonie in it held out to him when she cried, “Noooh! Why should I give it back to you? You gave it to me! Haven’t you got another two dollars?” He again suggested that she give it back to him and there they were, each with their right hand held out to one another, demanding something. Her face changed from a twisted, pained, pleading expression to one of accusatory anger, though it didn’t have far to go from one to the other. She asked, “Why did you call me over just to give me this?” She started walking away in disgust and said over her shoulder, “Don’t give me any more fucking money!” I don’t think there will be any danger of that. She continued swearing and talking to herself as she walked across toward the Dollarama, indifferent to the traffic that had to stop for her. I remember walking on Queen Street about a year ago. She was ahead of me, panhandling, with her back turned to me. As I was passing her she suddenly turned around and so I had to swerve further to get around her. She swore at me and accused me of trying to knock her down. I hope the gentleman who gave her the Toonie realizes that she’s mentally ill, and that his experience won’t affect any future urges to help people out.

            I had one student in my yoga class and it was the same woman that came two weeks before. It looks like I might have one new regular student.

            After class I went home to get my laundry and managed to take both bags while riding my bike. Once my bedding was in the washer I decided to check out the Salvation Army thrift store next door to see if they had any pants that I like or anything else of interest. From time to time I’ve found some good things there, but lately there doesn’t seem to be anything. On the counter, by the door was a truncated, automated Santa Clause, turning its head and moving its mouth as it sang, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”.

            I watched the second and third episodes of “Radar Men from the Moon”. The episodes are seven minutes shorter than in the other Commando Cody series. The cliffhangers are kind of lame because there’s nothing really clever about how Cody gets out of the tight spot they leave him in at the end of an episode. It just turns out to have not been as dangerous a situation as they made it appear. For instance, at the end of the first episode the ruler of the Moon shoots a ray gun at Cody. The blast hit furniture he was standing behind and exploded, but it really didn’t look like it hit Cody. Nonetheless, that was the cliffhanger. At the beginning of episode two, he just ran out after the blast.

            Another funny thing is that when Cody isn’t wearing his rocket suit, he’s wearing a white shirt and a tie, even in the spaceship on the Moon.

            The stories are evidence that the second series was simply based, plotwise on this one, with only slight differences.

Lilith

           

            Thursday was our last Children’s Literature lecture.

            Professor Baker started by pulling out a stack of unclaimed essays and started calling out the names, including Leanne Van Oosterhaut. I didn’t notice a single man’s name on the list. Only one young woman walked down to claim her paper.

            Deirdre said she’s be posting the marks for our second prose analysis in a week or so, explaining that she can’t mark too many of them in a row because that would not be good for the world.

            She began to go through the exam with us. There will be two prose analyses of passages from two different books. She suggested that we treat each passage like a poem we are analyzing. She advised us to spend about twenty minutes each on the prose analyses. There will be one short essay in which we will compare two texts that should take about fifty minutes to write. The final ninety minutes of the exam will be taken up with writing an essay that compares three texts.

            She gave us all of the possible essay topics in advance so we can work on it at home and try to remember our argument on examination day. Of course, we can’t use any aids or bring written material into the examination hall.

            One of the topics for the short essay will be the idea of the wicked witch. She then gave as an example, the White Queen in C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. She said that Lewis drew her out of the misogynist tradition of Lilith, the supposedly evil first wife of Adam. It’s interesting that she is considered to have been made of the same earth as Adam, while Eve is said to be a piece of Adam. Talk about second hand goods! One story has her abandoning Adam because he would not accept her as his equal and leaving the garden to partner with the Archangel Samael, who was god’s assassin. In this account Eve was only created as a replacement and damage control. Other sources say she was half genie and half giant. The White Queen is also considered to be half giant and half genie, so she’s lifted directly from the Lilith myth. Her magic wand is a phallic symbol that must be broken in order to defeat her. C. S. Lewis was totally against women having political power and it was apparently tied up with his phobia about insects. Insects represented for him two negatives: repugnant socialist governments and female dominance.

            Professor Baker talked about the building at McCaul and College where we will be taking our exam, which she said smells of generations of nervous students.

            After class I shook Deirdre’s hand and told her that in the light of her lectures much of the material became more interesting to read.

            I rode to Danforth and Broadview and then north to Pottery Road, then back down to Chester Hill and west to the lookout over the Don Valley because the last time I was there my camera battery ran out of power.

            On the way back, a nervous middle-aged guy passed me, pedaling like his life depended on it and bobbing his head as he went. I passed him at several points along the way but he kept going through red lights. At Yonge he stopped but I got off my bike because there was a walk signal. I was just in front of him when he saw the signal, realized he could advance and bumped my bike without apologizing.

            I went down to College and took it to Dovercourt, where I met Thomas Hendry. We stopped to chat about my courses for a while and then went our separate ways.

            I spent a few hours going through all of my emails on G-mail to collect all of my correspondences with Paul Valliere since 2013. I ended up with a Word file that takes up 332 and a half pages. He sent me a lot of poems and stories to get feedback on and there were lots of chats on various topics both serious and silly.

            I watched the first episode of Radar Men from the Moon. It seems to be an earlier version of the Commando Cody series. The rocket ship, his rocket suit and many of the locations and sets are the same. Commando Cody is played by an older actor that doesn’t wear a mask. The only actor in both series is Aline Towne, in her role as Joan. The plot is very similar to early episodes in the other series but there is no Universal Ruler, but rather a ruler of the Moon, who wants to conquer Earth because his world is dying. When they first head for the rocket ship, Ted expresses disapproval of “a woman coming along.” Joan says that they’ll be glad she came along when they have someone cooking for them. The other series had no cliffhangers, but this one ended with Cody getting shot by a ray gun.

It Might Be Nicer Not to Feed the Animals

           

            I went down to the foodbank as usual at around 11:00 on Wednesday. Any of the staff members that were smoking were standing out on the sidewalk, far from the foodbank door. I wonder if my complaints have had some kind of effect. The gut at the door was smoking an e-cigarette, which is something new for him.

            I had arrived after they had already started giving out numbers and so it didn’t take long for me to leave with number 24.

            I went to the bank to take out my rent money. Since my rent is $586.39, I just took out $600. When asked how I’d like the bills I told the teller to either give me $500 in hundred dollar bills or just tear a thousand dollar bill in half.

            When I came back to the foodbank at around 13:30, I picked various spots to stand and wait depending on which people around me were smoking and kept moving back and forth accordingly like the queen on a chessboard.

The red-faced woman was sitting at the broken hexagonal picnic table behind a man who was facing away from her. She kept asking him questions and responding to the answers. “What level of school did you finish?” “Grade eight.” “Oh yeah. I got three months of grade eleven.” “You got any kinda trade?” “Yeah. Carpentry.” “Oh yeah? Well that’s pretty good! What kind of work do you get with that?” “Construction.” “Do you like comin here?” “It’s okay.” “I like it pretty good.” There was a pretty young Latina woman standing with another woman nearby, and the red-faced woman said of her, “I like that cute little Italian girl over there!” She also said, “They say the world’s gonna end in two days” and “Some people don’t believe in god, but they’re still good people.” The man she was talking to had a bag of empty beer bottles tied to the handle of his two wheeled shopping cart. At one point it flipped over and there was a breaking noise. Someone nearby advised him not to open it up there but to sort it out when he gets to the Beer Store. He reassured him that it was probably only one bottle that broke.

The foodbank, after unpacking food deliveries, usually leave the empty boxes piled up just inside the door. One of the customers looked in and complained that there weren’t any boxes and so he might have to come back on Saturday because there was nothing for him in which to carry food away. I suggested that he check some of the stores nearby to see if they have any boxes. Just then a skinny woman about my age, in glasses and old clothes, rode up the driveway on her bicycle. She immediately went to the garbage cans outside the door and picked out two full loaves of bread, giving them a sniff before putting them in her bag. The guy who’d been complaining about the boxes called out, “That’s for the birds!” though he didn’t form it as a question; I think he was asking for confirmation. She explained that she cuts them in half and leaves them out for the birds. Then she said, “Always be nice to animals!” and as she walked her bike back through the group, she said a little louder, as if it was the most important thing everyone would hear that day, “Always do something nice for animals, every day!” She walked her bike over to the other garbage cans lined up at the other side of the driveway and noticed something of interest. She bent down and rummaged a bit, then walked over to the guy who’d been complaining about the boxes and gave him a big canvas shopping bag, explaining that a whole bunch of them had been thrown out. She took some for herself but let people know there were more there and then she rode away.

I’m not so sure though if her policy of feeding animals and birds is a good one. Certainly if one sees an animal in real need it makes sense to help it out. But feeding birds increases their numbers and makes it so there are more to go hungry unless more and more people feed them. Also, if everyone did what she does the city would be full of bird feces and disease. So doing something nice for animals every day, might in the long run, be not to feed them at all. People unintentionally drop plenty of stuff they can eat all the time in a big city. Let the ones that eat be the quick and clever ones so we have something to admire.

            Once my number was called, I went in and sat down. A young guy was about to sit down to the right of a big, middle-aged man, who asked him what number he had. He told him he had 25. The big guy said, “I got 22!” and indicated that he should sit further to the left of him. The young guy just said, “No problem!” and moved. I sure wouldn’t have, since it makes no difference where one sits. One isn’t going to get food any sooner or easier just because someone isn’t sitting to their right.

            Theresa called my number. There were a few things they don’t normally have on the first shelves, such as Knorr soup mixes, a little jar of Old El Paso green chillies and some single serving coffee pods. They had canned fruit, but I made sure I got the kind that wasn’t sweetened with Sucralose. In the cold section there wasn’t much. Sue said that I was one number too late to get something more, though I don’t know on what it was that I missed out. I got a package of Compliments sliced ham, a Lean Cuisine chicken fettuccini frozen dinner and a two-litre bottle of V8. In the bread section I got a big bag of cranberry chocolate buns and another of pretzels. For vegetables, I got a bag of new potatoes, a squishy tomato and a seedless cucumber that was squishy at either end.

            I didn’t go out for a bike ride that evening because I’d already been out and because I needed to get my course evaluations filled out.

            There were some guys doing some work that evening at the back door by the deck. When Sundar came for the rent I found out that they were unsealing the door to and fixing up a broom closet under the stairs that leads to the third floor. All these eighteen years that I’ve lived here and I didn’t even know there was anything there.

            I watched the final episode of Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. Gloria Pall, though uncredited this time, gets her biggest role as she walks in, speaks a bit, sits down and takes dictation from the dictator. The story is a direct continuation of the previous episode, in which Cody captures three of the Ruler’s men on Mercury. Cody forced one of them to lure the Ruler to Mercury so they could capture him. Before he can do that though, he and his crew are captured by Mercurians, because they mistakenly think they are with the Ruler. The Queen of Mercury releases them and puts her men at their disposal. Ever notice that there are no countries on other planets and that the entire world is usually ruled by a king or queen? Meanwhile, the Ruler has captured Cody’s ship. But Cody has removed a vital part so it can’t take off. The Ruler sends for a spare from his ship. Cody welds the exhaust hole shut on his ship so the Ruler can’t take off. The Ruler has one of his ships bomb them from above. Cody flies up and captures the bomber in his rocket suit. Then he and Dick disguise themselves as some of the Ruler’s men and capture him. There is peace in the universe!

Every Incantation Holds a Built-in Mistake

           

            On Tuesday I got up for a while at around 3:45. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d make use of that energy to go on a search for bedbugs. I looked in all the nooks and crannies along the doorframe where they used to go, and there were none. The northern baseboard, which also used to harbour a large number, was also vacant. The western baseboard that meets the side of my mattress didn’t even have a bedbug corpse. All along the southern baseboard there was nothing, until the very end, when one medium sized bedbug came out of a hole I poked with a skewer stick. When I killed it, it was black inside and almost dry, so I found that encouraging. I haven’t seen any of them crawling in the open for a month now, but sometimes when I’m sitting at my computer I detect a bedbug odour in that area. The exterminator is coming on Friday. It would be a nice Christmas present to finally be free of bedbugs before the new year.

Later that morning we had what was essentially our last Children’s Literature lecture, because on Thursday I think she will be just talking about our December 22 exam and how we should prepare for it.

            The focus of this talk was the power of words.

            In Frances Hodgsen Burnett’s “A Little Princess”, Sara’s greatest power, even when she is wealthy, is combined in her ability make up and to tell stories. Language is power and also a kind of magic. Burnett herself ironically became one of the richest writers of her era based on her ability to tell stories of people living in poverty.

            We looked at some examples in Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s “The Jolly Postman”, of ways of using writing towards a powerful effect. The first was the letter of apology from Goldilocks to the Three Bears. Saying one is sorry makes for a powerful message and deliberate spelling errors draw attention to the words that are misspelled, thus giving them emphasis.

            The advertisement addressed to witches uses persuasive language.

            The lawyer’s cease and desist letter to the Big Bad Wolf shows that legal language in itself is a type of incantation.

    There was a ten-minute break, after which we looked at Diana Wynne Jones’s “Howl’s

Moving Castle”. The story takes place in the kingdom of Ingary, which is a fairy tale

world where there are no books. Sophie gives into the idea that if one fairy tale convention is true then they must all be true and so she tries her best to fit in to her own story as she believes it is fixed to be. Her magical ability, unknown to her until later on, is that whatever she says will happen comes true. Howl uses language to convince or deceive others.

Howl comes from our world and a curse is placed on him using our world’s literature with the words from the verses of John Donne’s poem, “Song”:

Go and catch a falling star,

    Get with child a mandrake root,

    Tell me where all past years are,

    Or who cleft the devil's foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy's stinging,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,

Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights,

    Till age snow white hairs on thee,

Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,

All strange wonders that befell thee,

And swear,

No where

Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,

Such a pilgrimage were sweet;

Yet do not, I would not go,

Though at next door we might meet;

Though she were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

            All poetic language is a type of spell and every incantation contains a built in mistake to prevent accidents.

            Every fairy tale contains at least one truth.

            Sophie’s experience after being transformed into an old woman suggests that female curiosity is punished in the young and rewarded in the old. It also explores young women’s fear of the other as predator. There are similar elements to Beauty and the Beast.

            A moving castle represents a fear of commitment.

            The man who keeps becoming different kinds of dogs represents the frequent transformations that accompany adolescence.

            In light of the discussion of adolescence and transformation I told the professor that when I was twelve, I used to comb my hair like a different member of the Monkees every day.

            Between class and work I had two hours and ten minutes, so I went to the models lounge at OCADU and took a nap for a while. Then I plugged my laptop in and finished reading “Howl’s Moving Castle”, which marked the end of all the required reading for the course. I was surprised to find that I was done so soon because the e-book was much bigger than the book. The file had a chapter each of two other of Jones books.

            I worked for Nick Aoki who kind of talks like a DJ and says “All right!” a lot, plus he’ll end his sentences often with, “right?” The class ended twenty minutes early because they had to go to the computer lab and write their “course surveys”, which I assume are the same as our course evaluations at U of T. We stopped having to do ours at school two years or so ago and now the university just sends us a link by email and bugs us with additional links until we’ve done it. I still haven’t done mine yet, but probably will on Wednesday.

            I watched the eleventh episode of Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. This one was called “Lost in Outer Space”, but once again, nobody in the story was lost in outer space at all. Cody and his crew were on patrol in their rocket ship when they observed a fight between two guys in space suits on top of one of the Ruler’s rockets. One of them fell off and so Cody rescued him. He claimed to be from Mercury and that he had been trying to escape the Ruler’s enslavement. There’s a comment from Cody’s boss, Mr Henderson, about how Mercurians are an “intelligent and hard working people”, so these stories must be set in an undisclosed future when we discover a civilization on Mercury, even though all the cars and clothing on Earth are from the 1950s. They take the guy they rescued to Mercury, but he is really working for the Ruler and rendezvous on Mercury with two more of the Ruler’s henchmen with the intention of stealing Cody’s ship. Two of them also are planning on betraying the Ruler and just using Cody’s ship for their own purposes. The bad guys were, of course defeated by Cody. Gloria Pall didn’t appear in this episode, even though she was credited.

            I fell asleep on the couch after the show was over, then there was a knock on the door. Sundar, the super, had come for the rent. Maybe it’s because I’d just woken up or maybe I’m getting Alzheimer’s, but I stood there at first feeling confused. The rent? Didn’t I pay that already? What day is this? Finally I realized that it was the first of the month but also realized that I’d forgotten to go to the bank to take out the rent money. I told him to come back on Wednesday.

Purple Bra in the Bike Lane

           

            I worked on Monday afternoon at OCADU for Bob Berger’s class. It was just one long pose in my street clothes and Bob suggested that I sit with my laptop, so I made it over halfway through Diana Wynne Jones’s “Howl’s Moving Castle”.  One of the places where the doorway of Howl’s castle exits is to modern Wales, where Howl or “Howell” is from. No one there realizes that he is a powerful wizard in another place and time. They just know that he wrote his doctorate on magic as a historical study. It also turns out that Sophie has magical powers of which she had been unaware.

            After work I rode up to Bloor and then headed east. Halfway across the Prince Edward Viaduct I passed over a purple push-up bra that was lying on the bike lane. I rode up Broadview to Chester Hill and then explored all the little streets south and west of that point to the edge of the valley. At the west end of Chester Hill there is a railing where people can stand and look down on the Don Valley Parkway, which is a marvel of aesthetic design. It must be. It wouldn’t be possible to make a valley look that ugly at sunset by accident.

            I watched a poorly named episode of Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe called “S.O.S Ice Age”. The Universal Ruler had one of his men go to the magnetic north pole to install a device that would line up the Earth’s axis with the tilt of the planet Saturn, causing the south pole to tilt towards the sun and the north away, thus thrusting the northern hemisphere into an ice age. Commando Cody and his crew go to the magnetic north pole and Cody destroys the device.