Bill Bissett

            I spent the early part of Tuesday working on my review of Linda Stitt’s salon. When it was time to get ready to go to class I copied my review on a flash drive and took my laptop with me.

            The strange coincidence of every Tuesday this year being wet continued. It had rained most of the day but fortunately there was nothing coming down on my way to school.

            When I got to the classroom I had more than half an hour to finish my review and it was almost done by the time George Elliot Clarke arrived.

            George handed out our essay topics for the final project, plus the instructions for those of us who choose to instead submit a poetry manuscript. He’d changed the prose requirement of the poetry project to four pages from three. He also specified that we draw our poetry from three poets that we’ve covered in the course. I asked if we could do more than three. He didn’t seem to understand my question at first. He told me that it’s not an analysis of someone’s poetry. I assured him that I understood that. Finally he said that it was okay to work with more than three poets.

            George told us that we would have another guest reader this time and that it would be Bill Bissett, if he remembered to come. I offered the observation that Bissett does float very freely so it was possible that he would forget.

            The book we looked at this week was Jeff Derksen’s “Vestiges”. George said that he wouldn’t blame us if we think it’s boring. I added that it was dry. The poetry is constructed from snippets of quotes, some of which are drawn from before the Common Era and many from such thinkers as Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse. The book is heavily focused on a Marxist view of economics.

            George asked if we knew the significance of May 1968 in France. I was the only one in the class that knew that it was a general strike but I didn’t understand the full impact. Workers and students took over the country for a month. Universities shut down and professors gave lectures in cafes. Despite all of this the country still functioned. Goods were delivered and people were fed, without the need of the government. It was a utopian experiment. It was an apprehended revolution.

            On May 30 Charles DeGaul left France with the intention of drawing from the French troops stationed in Germany an invading force to take back France. But it was not necessary. Instead he went on television and told everyone to go back to work and to stop behaving like children.

            “Vestiges” is full of alternative facts that really are facts. George spent more of the class discussing economics than he did Derksen’s book. He told us that right now in Vancouver there is a housing crisis because of offshore capital coming in. The CBC, which George assured us is not fake news, reported that offshore investment from Asia was about producing homes for Chinese children coming to Vancouver to study. The Globe and Mail reported that 99.7% of detached homes in Vancouver now cost $1 million.

            “Vestiges” is a collection of headlines serving as provocations on the impact of economic realities on our lives. Toronto is not as bad as Vancouver but it is also very expensive. He cited a recent article about a CBC reporter who began couch surfing in Toronto when her rent went up to almost $1 thousand a month.

            Economic facts sculpt everyday life. There are 3700 people living on the sidewalks of Toronto. Life is picayune.

 The opening sentence of the Communist Manifesto mentions the specter of Communism. “Vestiges” is about the economic disjunctions that still haunting the world.

            George is upset with Bell because of his $138.00 a month bill. He mentioned again not having a cell phone because of charging problems. Someone told him that a Nokia phone has a one-month charge. George was impressed because Nokia is a Finnish company so he concluded the phone must be good. George told us that Canadian telecommunications costs are the highest in the world because they are not regulated.

            George recounted that he was at the bank depositing cheques, “Which I like to do”, when the teller addressed him as “Dr. Clarke, which I also like”. They wanted to know if he’d like to run a line of credit. He was told that if he would like to run a balance they would drop his interest rate from 18.5% to 8%. George said it’s usurious, since the prime rate has been at 2% for the last few years.

            Derksen is interested in the contradictions of our every day life. George assured us that he wanted to talk poetry but needed to set the context. Students and workers are the two most oppressed groups. Empowered elites are dictating to us what we should accept. George noted that it would be “International Women’s Day tomorrow. Congratulations!”

            “Vestiges” is about the liberal, democratic globalized world and the continued specter of economic disjuncture.

Of the Panama Papers, even Canada was willing to look the other way and to cut a deal for tax evaders.

As the warmongers were promoting the invasion of Iraq in 2003, George remembered the 1991 Gulf War over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. “In April 1991, the United States and the Brits annihilated 100.000 dudes in one night. There were kilometers of burnt out vehicles, so obviously there had to have been people inside of them. Weeks afterward, the United States allowed Iraq to have enough of an army to continue to suppress the Kurds because to allow them to form their own state would piss off Turkey, which is a member of NATO.
            Twenty years later they started pretending that Sadam Hussein was still a threat despite the fact that they had destroyed his army. 100,000 Iraqi children starved to death between 1991 and 1993, so how was Iraq a threat to the world? Acting upon this incredible lie resulted in the destabilization of the Middle East.

Derksen is urging us to pay attention. The first poem in “The Vestiges” is called “The Vestiges” – “Capitalizing the view”. Marxism is about materialism. George wants to be a rapper wearing a diamond encrusted hammer and sickle. Toronto means “the place where the trees stand in water”. Now it is a place of canyons of glass and steel. The impact of capitalism on city planning is that a view has a price.

On page two Derksen is describing Vancouver – “Intensive ownership / spiraling up, making air / solid space …” Marx say that everything solid melts into air. Everything is contingent on capital. The word “civilization” means “a collection of cities”. George mentioned John Clare, the peasant poet and Jacques Derrida’s “Specters of Marx”.

On Page 4, “These machines in the garden” refers to Leo Marx and “Every day more intense nature” to Leo Strauss.

On page 7 there is a reference to returning soldiers taking over the Hotel Vancouver and to “the beloved boys / Regina 1935 /shot or sent back / on the same train / still without jobs”.

The vision of “Vestiges” is that there is no peace. George picked up the Toronto Star and started showing us today’s headlines. “Politicians Should Know Cost of Having Children”.

On page 9 Derksen makes a list of phrases from “post – Mulroney” to “post- drone”. The irony is that we are not “post” anything. Everything before the revolution is pre-history. The last ten years has been a decade of economic struggle because of the fraud inflicted on us by Wall Street.

At this point Bill Bissett had arrived and George invited him to the front to read for us.

Bill announced from the back that he was just getting over the flu. Suddenly I felt like I was catching something before he was even nearby. Bill gingerly made his way down the steps, looking frailer than the last time I saw him a couple of years ago at the Plastiscene Reading Series. He is 77 years old, after all. He asked us all “Are you excellent?” He handed out a copy of his first poem to everybody, written very large on a poster size sheet of paper. In reference to what George had been talking about, Bill declared, “Everything is fluid and there’s not enough liquidity!” George loved that.

Bill mentioned that he is getting an eye operation.

George introduced him as the foremost exponent of TISH, the Beats. I remember that in a 1968 interview Jack Kerouac referred to Bill Bissett as a great poet.

Bill wanted us to read his poem together out loud, so we did:

“thank u great infinit molecular tapestree / 4 inklewding us in    4 holding / 2gether / sew we can b / sew many realms uv consciousness / wayze around  withing parts uv / molecules dissolv n reappear / there is no outside uv  we ar visibul / n not apeering yet apeering sum /wher els / ar our dishes n goblets / we swim in around th streem / n in th waters / ride th change  no clinging can / sustain us / wher we ar is changing th space / n time we live with  o  great / infinit molecular tapestree / letting us b   appeer   flashing all / th colours / guide us / within / with  surround us  all thru us / ar us  from our fingr tips / touch th fire watr air / ar  us  erth  weer th ethr / change dance  changing / us.”

George mentioned that Bill is also a fine visual artist and that he has a show of his paintings starting on March 26 at the Secret Handshake Gallery at 170a Baldwin St on the 2^nd floor above Graffiti’s in Kensington market.

Bill said that he left home at 16.

From his next poem – “When I was a boy in Alabama I ate all the crocodiles … I was so bereft that I turned to the writing of poetry … Sometimes I remember nothing, sometimes I remember everything …” Bill begins to break down the syllables of his words into repetitive chants before returning to recognizable words. He does this several times during his reading. “ … ah you can find almost anything anywhere … I keep a light on for us but we’ll be back … dim … we’ll be back … The inventiveness of the mind … If they take away our minds we’ll still remember … If we find ourselves missing we’ll find each other after all … This mind is like a kaleidoscope … oranges options get your fresh options … There is no answer … I saw the zebras running across the savannah … Zavaavheeyoshe is he is I as wrapped around him … Earth content him a wrapped him her wrapped around him … We oh … There is no answer contented … Shebezya … We invent many gods and tear them down blow up everything can we evolve beyond any rhymed moon a strange intolerances mushroom sway a great writing medicine a science a touch down sports coliseums a zebra skyscraper … What is it now … We create many gods … a parts of speech … Touch the zebra skyscraper … Was that you bena benga.

George said Bill could do one more poem.

Bill started talking about the University College building and how he saw an intimidating iron gate just inside the main entrance. He declared to himself, “I will not be deterred!” When he discovered that to the left and right of the gate are side doors, he though that was very inventive. Bill announced that he would do two shorter poems and then a longer one, but George told him that he only had four minutes.

From Bill Bissett’s last poem – “The fate of bugs on a windshield is harsh … Reincarnation blues … Help! Help! Help! … These bugs on a windshield might have a soul too … I walk to the end of the pier … Get together with someone it doesn’t matter who … No longing it’s here now nothing to understand really … I go inside the ride is starting … Stars I don’t know how when where I don’t really know what I said all the skys you’re coming me all over the eyes his arms around him my rain trembling in what is were what is are can he count the stars.”

George called a fifteen-minute break and urged his students to buy Bill Bissett’s books and CDs.

Bill and George had met years ago in Sydney, Nova Scotia and there was a plaque in front of a hotel, that according to Bill, commemorated the killing of the crew of a Nazi boat by the people of Sydney with sticks.

Bill said his books were normally $20.00 but he was offering a half price student discount or two books and a CD for $20.00. George took that deal.

Bill asked me if I wanted to buy a book but I told him I had no money, so he asked which of his books I would like to have. I told him I was interested in his novel, “Novel”, so he gave it to me. I asked him to sign it. I don’t know if he remembered meeting me before or if he’d just forgotten my name. When I told him he asked if I was overwhelmed to be named after a religion. I told him that I hoped my name didn’t overwhelm the religion and George laughed. Bill declared, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to overwhelm a religion!” He wrote on the inside: “4 Christian all best love u (a word I can’t make out) bill”.

Bill asked us if we had a solution to the economic problems that George was talking about before he started reading. I suggested, “education.”

George invited Bill to stay but he said he had to continue on with the troubadour life. George said, “The Beats go on!”

George declared, “After the break I get serious!”

I told everyone about seeing Bill Bissett in Vancouver in 1979 at a benefit for Bill’s publishing company, blewointment press. The Four Horsemen were there and there was a poet reading onstage who I thought was pretty good but there was a heckler in the audience saying nasty stuff. Finally the poet got fed up and started to rouse the audience against the heckler. When everyone turned to eject him it turned out that it was Bill Bissett. That was the introduction for his set.

George said that was part of Bill’s schtick. For him there is no barrier between speech and song. He’s a living Beatnik. He was nominated for a Governor General’s Award. He has authenticity. He’s not a phony. He lives by his art. He may never win the Griffin Prize.

Jeff Derksen is probably the furthest from Bill Bissett one can get. He ransacks histories. For Derksen, authorship is communal. We all carry an imprint of the times. Every time is precarious. Precarious means “on the verge of decay”. We have a crazy guy in North Korea and a crazy guy in the White House. Maybe not crazy, but unprepared. Derksen wants to enlighten but he may not be successful.

A campus party in Alberta associated with the Wild Rose Party recently circulated a statement that feminism was akin to cancer.

George declared that the Trump regime is not a government but rather a regime and that the United States needs a regime change.

Derksen wants to unearth history.

Martin Luther King Day exists because of a movement that guaranteed people the right to vote. But in 2013 the Supreme Court of the United States rolled back the Voters Rights Act of 1965. Just because we won health care doesn’t mean that our children will have it.

George said they are raising the retirement age in Europe to 70 and that they are considering raising it in Canada to 67, which is two years closer to dying. Most men die at around 72. George says the only reason to raise it is to deny people their pension. From what I can tell they are raising the retirement age based on the fact that life expectancy is rising. Different European countries have calculated the averages and set goals for changing the retirement age based on that. The highest retirement age by 2020 will be at 72 in Denmark.

George declared that since he was born in 1960 he’s neither a Boomer nor an Xer. It depends on which definition one uses. He could be seen as a Boomer like me by some or as an Xer by others. I just discovered though that there’s a Generation Jones defined by some as being between 1954 and 1963, which would make us both and Obama generation Jones. 

Derksen wants to awaken us to decay. Trickle down economics might be better for the sewer than for people.

The year of the coup in Chile was the year that Marvin Gaye released Let’s Get It On”.

“The third way” was Tony Blair’s agreement between Labour and capital.

Is Jeff Derksen’s “Vestiges” poetry? Why not just write a pamphlet? George assures us that it is poetry. “It rained across all indexes” is a reference to Paul Verlaine.

Why is it always Africans that a tried in the International Court? The war criminal court is racist. Why not George Bush and Tony Blair? Any one of us could just bring a newspaper as evidence and testify. George declared that it would be a rush better than cocaine to put one of those guys behind bars.

We can’t afford to be misled. Keep Dionne Brand in mind.

Page 17 has a reference to Eliot.

Page 35- “Baton on bone” and a quote from Edward Greenspan – “I found a flaw / in the model / of how the world works”.

George said that there is trouble everywhere and that there is no escape, then he began to chant, “crisis crisis crisis crisis crisis crisis crisis trouble crisis crisis cash cash cash cash cash …” This went on for a few minutes. I asked him if he’d just made it up. He said, “Of course I just made it up, Christian!” I said that it sounded like something from a movie like something that would be chanted by Oompa Loompas. Patrick said George was channeling his inner Bill Bissett.

Page 40 has a reference to the G-20 riots.

Page 41 uses juxtaposition to emphasize contradiction, which is a Marxian idea.

Page 46- “Surplus is violence” is a play on Proudhon’s “Property is theft”. If you own something you stole it.

The section taken from Kapital is digested Marx. Derksen is playing off of Pound with slabs of information. “Vestiges” is meant to represent the Poundian approach.

Page 62 has an analysis of the oppression of women just in time for International Women’s Day.

George said there are some small errors in the book, mostly getting years wrong.

Derksen uses William Burroughs Cut Up technique. I mentioned that David Bowie used it for his lyrics. George said that explained a lot.

“Vestiges” is didactic but maintains poetry in the style of Pound’s Cantos, which was about arms, merchants and high finance.

Derksen takes on a conspiratorial world view bordering on the occult. Using the cut-up technique means that it is selective and therefore propagandist. But if there were really a plot it would have been figured out a long time ago.

Even poets can intrude their way into economic debate but they may be wrong.

At the end I asked George if he’d heard any of the National Lampoon records. I told him about Lemmings, their parody of Woodstock and the music of that era. They had a made-up band called The Motown Manifestos that made a song out of some of Karl Marx’s text called “Papa Was a Running Dog Lackey of the Bourgeoisie” – “Workers of the world unite / You have nothing to lose but your chains / You can lose them if you’d like tonight / but you gotta strive you gotta strive with all your might and main // The history of our tired society / is a history of a struggle with the bourgeoisie / From now on we must strive resolutely / to bring about the overthrow of the bourgeoisie // I address myself to the doomed bourgeoisie / The bourgeoisie creates a world in its own image / The bourgeoisie controls the means of production / The bourgeoisie leaves nothing but naked self interest / The bourgeoisie is full of shit // Our ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of existing conditions /  Let the ruling classes tremble at the communist revolution / We distain to reveal our views and our aims / The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains …” I sang a bit of it to him.

As we were packing up there was a conversation between George and Patrick about the movie about James Baldwin. George said that Baldwin tried to be macho and a misogynist to cover up the fact that he was Gay because the leaders behind the civil rights movement said that it would hurt the cause if he came out.

Linda Stitt's Words and Music Salon

I was especially glad on Saturday to get finished with the food bank early because I planned to go to Linda Stitt’s Words and Music Salon early that afternoon and it was nice to be able to go home for a while without having to rush off. I had about an hour and a half to relax, have a coffee and eat something before leaving.

A few days before that I had bought a couple of cans of coconut milk at Freshco because I wanted to see if it would work as a coffee creamer. When I tried it on Saturday it worked fine, so now I don’t have to stop drinking coffee when I temporarily go off dairy.

On my way up Brock Avenue I saw a couple walking south that were wearing matching white knitted woollen caps with long, dangling braided ties. I was thinking that couples that wear matching clothes probably stay together longer because, “Who else would be with them?”

Linda’s salon lost it’s home a couple of months ago when the Italian restaurant at Bay Street and St Joseph where she’s been holding it for years went out of business. She’d found a temporary place around the corner for February, but for the first Saturday in March it was to be in the Smiling Buddha at 961 College Street West. This is a very convenient location for me because it only takes ten minutes for me to get there on my bike. I rode past the place on the first try because I’d forgotten the exact address, and then dismounted at Dovercourt to walk back. Even while walking and looking at each place to the end of the block I ended up missing it again. I got back on the velo and rode east once more and finally found it.

As I was locking my vehicle to a stand directly in front of the bar. Linda Stitt came to the door and saw me, then came out to say hello. “Hi Linda! What are you doing here?” I was teasing that I just happened to be there and didn’t know what was going on. She answered, “I’m here for my salon, which you’ll be reading at soon!” She was referring to my guest reading that will be taking place on June 3^rd. I went inside and found the only fully empty table.

Linda came over to chat and so I asked her whether or not the Smiling Buddha was the new permanent home for her salon. I explained that I would have started promoting my gig back in February if she hadn’t lost her venue. I didn’t want to tell be people, “I hope you can come to my show on June 3^rd, though I don’t know where it is.” Linda is into eastern philosophy so her first answer was, “Nothing is ever for certain!” I agreed but dug in with a more specific question: “In terms of probability then, is this the new home?” She said that it probably is.

The set-up of the Words and Music Salon has two guest storytellers, one guest musician, one guest poet, a featured poet and a featured musician. The musical side of things is organized by Lucky Mike, who I know from when he used to host the Yellow Door open stage at 6 St Joseph.

The guest poet for this month was Mary Milne. When she arrived and was passing my table I called her name. She looked around but didn’t see me so I called again. When she recognized me she asked if she could join me.

The event was kicked off by Lucky Mike with an original called, “When Did The Stars Fall From the Sky?” It was a musically typical country song with lyrics about the singer finding out that his partner has fallen out of love with him and he is the last to know. It uses conventional metaphors for the disaster of a break-up such as the stars falling and the mountains crumbling and the punch line is that if all this had really happened he would have seen it on TV.

One verse into the song Tom Hamilton arrived carrying his violin case but still bundled up for the cold day outside. He walked on stage and up to the second microphone in time to sing along with the chorus. After that was finished he got out his violin, had his coat pulled from his shoulders and halfway off his arms when the next chorus came around and finally had the thing removed in time for his solo.

The first invited guest of the afternoon was storyteller, Pat Bissett. She told us about Samuel de Champlain’s indentured servant Étienne Brûlé. Pat said that he made friends with the Innu, but I think she got them mixed up with the Hurons. He never got scurvy because he ate the native foods rather than the salt pork that the other white men were eating. Champlain arranged for Brûlé to go and live among the Hurons to serve as an unofficial ambassador from France and during his stay he became a full member of the nation. In exchange, Chief Iroquet requested that Champlain take Savignon, a young Huron, who traveled to France with Champlain and then back again with him back to New France.

Champlain sent Savignon and two others on a canoe trip to send a message but on the way back the boat overturned in rough rapids. Savignon was the only survivor but according to Pat, Champlain thought that he had drowned.
            Pat said that Champlain went back to France and broke his leg. All I can find is that he got shot with arrows in his knee and leg in a battle with the Onandaga.

Savignon told his people about Europe. He described horses as moose without antlers. When asked if he would go back he explained that he could never live in a place where children outside of the king’s palace were starving.

Champlain came back with priests and found Brûlé again. The young man had learned several languages. He did not want to return to France because there he would be a peasant while with the Huron he was free. She said he was tortured to death but I don’t think she mentioned that he was eaten.

Pat then sang a song she’d written that basically recounted the story that she’d just spoken.

Linda had a hard time getting up onto the stage to introduce the featured poet, Terry Watada. Then she had difficulty reading his bio under the red spotlights, so someone came up to shine a flashlight on the text for her as she told us about Terry Having won the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Getting down from the stage was also a struggle for her. Someone had to help her each way.

Terry, while putting his aluminum cane aside, explained, “I don’t really need this. I just use it to get a free seat on the TTC.” He told us that this was his third appearance at Linda’s salon.

His first poem was called “Dazzling Blue” – “When I awoke from the depths of ageless sleep I tasted sweetness, light and salt … my arms rose and my hands held the air until the overflow washed over me … My being shivered …”

His second poem was entitled “Deep Purple” but he explained it was not about the colour or the band but rather the song – “Where the deep purple falls … Thick music, warm and familiar … Long ago girls, I only see them in my sleep … But I awake in candlelight shadows … We will always meet here in my Deep Purple dreams.”

His third poem was about his friend Mike who passed away not long ago at the age of fifty – “As we drive through the night, Mike is cool, gripping the steering wheel … The cigarette burns brightly … Distant vistas are blind … Suns rise and set and meld into one hot brightness … No passing signs … Music plays on the radio: Meatloaf: Paradise by the Dashboard Light … Mythical Mike and the blind vistas … We will become part of the myth.”

Terry told us that his brother passed away in 2012. He explained that, “We got along, we didn’t get along … He always clung to the memory of being in Alberta … Internment … I can see him standing amongst the wheat … He must be eight, maybe younger … His body is thin due to a lack of nutrition … The sea of wheat, like the Pacific Ocean.”

He told us that his publisher would be angry if he didn’t read something from his book. The poem was based on a Japanese game where people get together in a room where the only light is provided by the lit candles that each person is holding. One by one each person has to tell a ghost story and then blow out their candle. After the last light goes out a ghost is supposed to appear.

The poem was called “Chinese Lamp” – “Laura Nyro sang her siren song … The colours and smells of Singapore … Mystery women … Intoxicating smoke … A 1930s noir poster … So soon, too young, gone too soon … Grandchildren calling “Ba chong!” … Darkness weaving the coat of daylight … And when I die, and when I’m gone.”

He recounted to us that when his mother died their Chinese lamp went out and never worked again.

His next poem was “Ghost Sleep” – “My eyes are brittle … West coast mountain forest … I see his competent open mouthed smile … He is dragging the wind behind him … The dream dissolves into drizzle.”

Terry said that there is a rich tradition of poetry in his family. Both his grandfather and father wrote poetry and each passed books down to him. He confessed though that he unfortunately did not speak Japanese but he did manage to get the books translated.

Terry shared with us that he used to be a musician before he gave it up when his hands stopped working. He bragged that he’d shared the stage with Willie Dixon and still remembers what he said to him: “I think you better tune up boy!”

His next poem was called “The Blues” – “Well I got a woman way over town, and so begins the Blues … Used to play sax for Ray Charles … Don’t drink from no bottle I didn’t open myself … Now you take then Raylettes, sweet as honey and easy to look at … Ray’s blind genius … I miss him … shit, he never drank Pepsi. He just did it for the money.

Terry told us that his next poem was for his wife of twenty-seven years. It had the title, “Love 27” – “Quiet music … a sad, distinct melody … She is music to me as we lie in bed in silence … Then I grasp her hand and she squeezes back, even in sleep …”

For the most part, I found the stories behind and around Terry Watada’s poetry to be more interesting than the poems themselves.

I was surprised that the crowd that Linda’s salon gathers is pretty grey on the top. I guessed the average age of the audience to be over sixty.

The guest musician was Anna Gutmanis. She sat down at the keyboard and she was there with a harmonica player and a singer, who I think she said was Karen Donaldson. Tom Hamilton also joined them on stage. She introduced her first song as being about women who are stuck in generational sandwiches. I was glad that she said that, because I found her lyrics difficult to hear. She has a soulful voice but she doesn’t enunciate her words very distinctly and she doesn’t have a lot of vocal range. Maybe if she stopped with the affectation of singing in a US accent she’s be able to deliver her lyrics more clearly.

From her next song I could make out –“Just when I’m afraid to stay you make my eyes so sharp”. Her compositions are musically notable and one can definitely see the influence of Soul music in her writing. I can’t fairly say much about her lyrics because I couldn’t hear them.

The feature musician was Michael Katz, who it was announced was making his first public appearance after a series of mishaps. From his bio Linda read that he’s been playing clubs in Toronto since the 1960s. This was apparently his third time at the salon but he recounted his first invitation when someone called to tell him, “We’d like you to play at the Words and Music Salon.” His response was, “Okay. What the hell is that?”

He announced that it would be Linda Stitt’s birthday on Monday, March 6^th.

Michael related a story about a trip to San Francisco with his friend Stan. They visited the City Lights Bookstore and found Lawrence Ferlinghetti playing chess on the second floor. He said, “Then I never saw Stan again until the last time I was here.”

Michael confessed that he does not write his own songs.

The first one he did, with the help of Tom Hamilton, of course, was a Bob Carpenter and Shirley Gibson composition. I couldn’t make out most of the lyrics and couldn’t find this song online. But based on the reference to ships I assume the Bob Carpenter mentioned was the critically acclaimed but virtually unknown Canadian songwriter of that name who died of brain cancer. – “I’d like to take a sailing ship … I’ve never seen the shore … Take it all back cause you’re off the track …”

Michael namedropped some people that he’s opened for over the years, such as Tim Hardin, Phil Ochs and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee.

His next song was Tim Hardin’s “If I Were A Carpenter”.

He followed that with a light slide version of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads”, with the improvised lyrics, “Goin down to Rosedale, with my brother by my side”.

Michael assured us, “I’m not gonna take up too much more of your time. There’s a whole lot of poetry going on. I was married to a poet once and that was enough. She’s published and I recognize myself in some of her poems so I don’t read them.”

He mentioned again, Stanley Featherman, “There’s no putz like an old putz! He passed in April. He never had anything bad to say about anybody, except for producers.” He said that this was a joke that Stan told: “Two producers are walking down the street and they see a gorgeous young woman. The first one says to the other, ‘I sure would like to screw her!’ The second one asks, “Out of what?’”

Mama D was sitting at the front table and Michael told her that he remembers her from 40years ago with a different name. He said that he and a friend once drove a long way to hear her play.

His next song was “The Weight” by Robbie Robertson. The audience loved this old stuff. They were swaying, nodding and singing along. For myself, it’s one of those songs, like almost everything by the Beatles and Bob Marley, that I’ve heard a hundred times too many. During the choruses, the woman at the table in front of mine, at the end of the third and highest harmonized repetition of the word “and” she would slowly and dramatically raise her hand up with the rising of the scale as if she was conducting the music.

Michael insisted jokingly, “I’ll only do one encore! Don’t beg!” He then assured us that he doesn’t like to be overtly political, but he’d “The Bourgeois Blues” by Leadbelly – “ … Home of the brave, land of the free, I don’t wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie … Well me and my wife we were standin upstairs, we heard the white man say I don’t want no niggers up there … Well them white folks in Washington they know how to call a coloured man a nigger just to see him bow …”

Michael’s last song was Jesse Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues”. It’s the one with the refrain, “Walkin with my baby by the San Francisco Bay”. Everybody was clapping along.

Michael was very impressed with Tom Hamilton’s violin playing. He said that they’d never played together before but that it sure didn’t sound like it.

Michael Katz is a good, albeit conventional guitarist and he has a strong stage presence with an ability to build a rapport with his audience. Although he’s not an outstanding singer, he hits all the notes. Most of his repertoire is obscure enough to be interesting.

Linda struggled to the stage again and read a poem called “Evolution or Extinction” – “When all is lost / good / Let it go / and then turn to the transcendental / Some annihilation / We won’t even mention fires and floods and earthquakes / Some are apprehensive / It’s time to join hearts / and transcend”.

Lucky Mike, with the help of Tom Hamilton on fiddle and Gene Hughes on mandolin, did a set of Irish music. Mike informed us that in 1847, during the potato famine, eleven of his ancestors came to Canada and five of them died on the way. One of them became a successful farmer and justice of the peace in northern Ontario.

He started with “Farewell to Nova Scotia” – “The sun is setting in the west, the birds are singing on every tree / All nature seems inclined to rest but still there is no rest for me // Farewell to Nova Scotia, the sea bound coast / Let your mountains dark and dreary be / For while I’m far away on the briny ocean tossed will you ever heave a sigh or a wish for me?” Tom also sang high harmonies.

Mike admitted that the next one was Scottish and then they did “Wild Mountain Thyme”.

He said the next one was called “The Mermaid”. Mike bantered to us that when sailors saw mermaids that it meant they were going to drown. He added though that no one that saw a mermaid ever returned to relate that they had. Tom offered that they did see lots of manatees though. I said to Mary, “But no womanatees”.

“ … Our captain he spied a mermaid so fair with a comb and a glass in her hand … Then up spoke the cook of our gallant ship and a dirty little rat was he / He said I care much more for my pots and pans than I do for the bottom of the sea …”

Mike informed us that during the potato famine there was lots of food but none for the Irish. Relating to that theme he sang Pete St. John’s “The Fields of Athenry” – “By a lonely prison wall I heard a young girl calling, ‘Michael, they are taking you away, for you stole Trevelyn’s corn so the young might see the morn. Now a prison ship is waiting in the bay … Against the famine and the crown I rebelled, they ran me down, now you must raise our child with dignity …”

They finished their set with one of the North American versions of the Scottish folk song, “Highland Laddie” – “Were you ever in Miramichi … There you tie fast to a tree … Were you ever in Quebec … stowing timber on the deck … Were you ever in Aberdeen … Prettiest girl you’ve ever seen …”

At this point there was a fifteen-minute break. Mary started expressing to me how distressing the news from the United States is these days. She declared, “They’ve really got to get rid of the Electoral College down there!” I offered the view, “But they won’t. Nothing ever changes in the United States.” I stated that since George H. W. Bush, no conservative has won the popular vote in a US election. Then I related something clever that I’d read on Twitter earlier that day. Someone tweeted: “Donald Trump is the stupid man’s idea of a smart man, the poor man’s idea of a rich man and the weak man’s idea of a strong man”.

After the break, Linda tried to introduce Mary Milne, but she couldn’t read her bio, so she asked Mary to come up and read it herself.

Mary only has one book of poems and rather than choosing which ones to read she asked the audience to call out page numbers. She called it “poetic roulette”.

Her first poem was “Thank Love” – “Casting smooth, clear eyed glances … Young woman is an ideal … They leave their dreams … constructing them out of their lilting songs …”

From “Sandcastles” – “I build a house of memories with dreams … images in empty mirrors … riots of colour … the past leaving little room for the underdeveloped.”

Mary informed us that she has three cats. Some people cheered with a sense of affinity. Then Mary said, “But I’m really a dog person” which got acknowledgements from entirely different members of the audience. Her poem was “Felinity” – “Francis the cat, carefully grooming his suit … Nothing that his magnetic yellow eyes missed … Mentally luring all the nice little mice … Occasional little flicks of ears and tail … Sitting in the window, batting at the flies … The late night howl of sadomasochistic courtship … Life in the cat lane.”

From “Wind Song” – “ Brushing caresses across our skin … Torch songs through tree tops.”

From “Night Winds” – “ … lapping at trees in the moonlight … Drying up the rain … Urging everything to dance.”

From “The Long Way Home” – “ … I think my Prozac just wore off …”

From “Touched” – “Madness makes it all bearable … So many of us are a few burgers short of a franchise.”

From “Decadence” – “My bed could not get enough of me today …”

From “Creating a Monster” – “Take a simple person and see magic in their dance … Take a simple case of like and turn it into obsession … Let a pleasant stranger become your hopes, your dreams, your monster.”

From “Interlude” – “All the dear soft moments … Completing each other’s sentences … The whole being greater than the parts.”

Mary’s last poem was called “Yet” – “Curves of sweet fullness … Maturity with all its lush richness … What one loses in intensity one gains in skill.”

The last feature of the afternoon was the storyteller, Adele Koehnke, who read two stories, the first of which was called “The Facecloth”-

“A long time ago on Harvey Avenue … Iris was married to Les, and Les worked for Hydro … They were happily married … Iris became friends with an Italian family next door …” The Italian lady was always giving Iris gifts of food, so one day Iris told her, “I'd like to make you something.” She asked her if there was anything they needed. “My husband Luigi, he need a new facecloth.” Iris asked her for the colours of the Italian flag. She answered, “It's red, green and white” but then she sneezed and Iris thought she said, “and brown”. On Christmas Eve she went over to bring her gift to the Italian family. She felt a little awkward at the door. She told Luigi's wife, “I made him the facecloth.” She called her husband and told him, “Iris made you something.” Iris pulled out the beautiful red, green, white and brown facecloth and said, “I did it in the Italian colours!” Luigi said, “That's not the Italian colours!” But his wife quickly said, “Your eyes are brown!”

Adele's second story was called “The Table Cloth” - “At Midland and Egg … Evelyn was getting married on Valentines Day.” Her grandmother started making her a tablecloth. “Every two inches she stitched a heart in different material … She had bad eyes …” When it was finished she brought it to her, along with a banking envelope containing a coupon for the cleaners for after the first time someone spills spaghetti sauce on the tablecloth. “They had to go up to Richmond Hill for the reception, but never mind.”  Just as everyone was about to leave the groom got down on one knee in front of grandma, telling her that he might be able to help her. “I'm a chief eye surgeon at Toronto General. I'd like to examine you.” A few days later he told her that he could give her 18% better in her left eye. So he did.

Adele told her stories well, but that last one wasn't a great story. Maybe if she'd described the grandmother screwing up the tablecloth because of her vision it would have been better.

Mike and Tom played us out, starting with “Come A Little Bit Closer” by Tommy Boyce. Bobby Hart and Wes Farrell - “In a little cafe just the other side of the border … I started walking her way, but she belonged to bad man Jose ... I dropped the drink from my hand and through the window I ran …”

Then Mike did one of his own compositions called, “After the Storm” - “ … The only time you feel happy is when someone else is feeling bad … How can anyone know anything about anything anyway … It's just across the border of chaos and order.

The penultimate song was the Irish folk song, “Whiskey In The Jar” – “As I was going over the Cork and Kerry Mountains / I saw Captain Farrell and his money he was counting / I first produced my pistol and then produced my rapier / I said stand over and deliver or the devil he may take ya … I took all of his money and it was a pretty penny / I took all of his money and I brought it home to Molly / She swore that she’d love me and never would she leave me / but the devil take that woman cause you know she tricked me easy … Being drunk and weary I went to Molly’s chamber / taking my money with me and I never knew the danger / At about six or maybe seven in walked Captain Farrell / I jumped up with my pistols and I shot him with both barrels … Well some men like the fishin and some men like the fowlin / and some men like to hear a cannon ball roarin /  Me I like sleeping in my Molly’s chamber / but here I am in prison and I wear a ball and chain there …”

Their last song was Calvin Carter and James Hudson’s doowop song, “Goodnight Sweetheart, It’s Time To Go” with very good high harmony by Tom Hamilton.

When I got home I removed my denture. That night at dinner I made the decision that the false tooth will only be used from now on for singing, speaking and appearing in public. When I eat at home I want to be comfortable.

Being "Graceful" at the Food Bank

            Saturday was my first time of getting up and starting the day with my new denture. It went in okay this time and it didn’t feel like it would fall out but I could feel a minute shifting sometimes when I scratched the area above my upper lip. I guess if it were even close to being as firm as a tooth it would not be removable. Drinking cold liquids is generally more pleasant with the denture in place because when the gap is exposed the fluid shocks my gums. Eating with the false tooth however is a very unpleasant experience. Having that little plastic plate at the roof of my mouth while I’m chewing just feels alien and I don’t think that I’m going to get used to it. 

I didn’t realize how cold it was on Saturday morning until after I’d ridden my bike to the food bank and started standing in line. There weren’t many people waiting because it was so close to welfare cheque time and because it was so cold.

I found out that my place in line was behind a two-wheeled shopping cart with a green plaid liner, but with its owner nowhere in sight.

A large woman sitting beside a skinny woman near the door was telling her about a service a service that she could get from the organization that they used to call St. Christopher House but which she called “Good Neighbour House”. I corrected her that it was actually called the “West Neighbourhood House” and then she remembered that was true.

I noticed a riotous symphony of bird sounds in the tree across the street. I looked up and saw that it was full of red winged blackbirds going crazy. I’d never seen them around there so it was a nice change to see birds in the neighbourhood that are actually native to North America. These guys have a wild vocabulary. In addition to the dramatized tweeting and the “chk chk chk!” they also have this long cross between a whirring noise and the sound of someone tightly winding an alarm clock. I wondered if it was the cold that was making them so excited and then I was curious whether their noises were happy or if they were complaining to each other about the weather.

This was the coldest day in the food bank line-up that I remembered. The woman who’d come just after me went inside for a moment to warm up and came out saying she was told they would start early and that we would be able to get our food right away.

The food bank didn’t start early though. They didn’t even start on time.

The Polish man that owned the green plaid cart finally arrived. On a day like this I could almost forgive him for marking his spot and then leaving to go somewhere warm, but it was nonetheless unfair to everyone else that risked frostbite to maintain the line.

They started taking people in, giving them their numbers and then giving out the food at 10:45. I got in with the third group of five, got a number and sat down. After some seats cleared on my right, a guy on my left said I should move down. When I asked why some people further down said that they’d just been taking whoever was closest without calling numbers. But even if that was the case I knew who I was behind and he hadn’t been called yet. But they did call numbers after all. When a volunteer shouted number 11 I jumped up because I’d forgotten that I had number 12.

Because I’m on my annual vegetarian diet none of the mixes, cookies or O’Henry bars on the first set of shelves were of interest to me. The only thing I took from the pasta, rice and sauce shelves was a jar of mild salsa. I grabbed a bag of chickpeas from the bean shelf, though they also had dried black lentils and lots of canned beans. I picked up a can of tuna because, even though I won’t be eating it till after Easter, it wouldn’t take up too much space on my shelf. In the soup section was a can of Egyptian style curried fava beans, so that was interesting enough to grab.

It looked like they’d finally run out of Aveeno shampoo, but I was given a Mystique five-blade razor from Pharmasave. It doesn’t specify on the package, but judging from the name and the purple, pink and white colour, I’m pretty sure it was designed for women, but it probably does the trick for men too.

All they had for cereal was chocolate kids stuff so I skipped it.

Across the aisle, when I approached Angie’s cold food section and she saw me, she told me to come closer and quickly handed me a 970-gram container of Becel olive oil margarine. I think they usually reserve such an item for families. I eschewed the milk and yogourt this time without explaining why. There was frozen ground beef and some other meat which I guess I could have taken and put it in my freezer until April but I wanted to use my fast as an excuse to defrost the ever shrinking snow cave at the top of my fridge, so I turned it down. Angie had moved along the line of items but I’d politely rejected each one. Her last try was a bag of eggs that I also let her know that I didn’t need this time. Then she declared, “You’re a graceful man!” and went to serve the next person.

The bread lady was minding the vegetable stand and just told people to take whatever bread they wanted from that section. I didn’t need any. The elderly man in front of me asked if he could take her home with the vegetables. She good-naturedly answered, “Maybe in the next life!” She gave me a small Danier bag full of a few potatoes, a couple of carrots and two onions. There was a bin full of acorn squash, some of which had started to go bad but I found a solid one. She said for me to take two so I dug for another.

There was a bin of individually wrapped ponkan oranges, which are a hybrid of mandarin and pomelo. She put three double handfuls into my bag and I saw the reason for the generosity once I got them home. Two-thirds of them were too ripe to eat, so I guess they wanted to get rid of them all that day so some of them could be edible.

            That was weird, Angie calling me a “graceful man”. I suspect that she might be sweet on me.

Indenture

            On Friday Nick Cushing was going to come in from Hamilton in the early afternoon to have me read some lines for his animation project. I realized that morning though that I’d forgotten to pay for my March phone service and so he wouldn’t be able to call me unless I got that done, so at around 10:00 I walked over to Freedom Mobile. On the way back I stopped at Lucky Supermarket where I bought a bunch of grapes and three apples. When I got home I decided to check to see if my dentist’s office had called and found out that they had, back in the last week of February. I phoned them right away and found to my surprise that my denture was ready. It only took three weeks even though Dr. He had assured me that I would have a two-month wait. They offered me an appointment for 13:30 so I took it and sent a message to Nick letting him know that we’d have to meet later.

            It was colder than I’d expected riding up to Bloor and Dundas and so I regretted having dressed for the way it had been for the last few days. Trusting the weather is like lending money to a crack addict. You can never depend on it.

            When I arrived at Smile City and walked up to the glass window of the front desk, the receptionist passed me a paper to sign and said it was for the “delivery” of my denture. I suddenly wondered if I’d come all the way up there just to arrange for a courier to bring the prosthetic tooth to my home. I repeated, “Delivery?” She said,  “That means so they can give you your denture. She told me to sit down, but almost immediately Dr. He’s assistant came and said “Hi”. She right away remembered that I refuse to be treated in the exam room that doubles as a thoroughfare for staff members who walk through it on their way to the lunch room. It took her less than a minute to find another office that was free. She told me that Dr. He was downstairs and would be there soon. I waited in the chair for about ten minutes and was starting to feel like succumbing to a nap when the dentist finally arrived.

            The denture looked like the foetus of a pink, white-headed pterodactyl that was missing its legs. When he shoved it into the gap to the right of my top front teeth it felt like he was ramming it in with a truck. Right away the bite felt wrong, so he made some adjustments behind my back with an electric grinding tool. This time it felt like my bite was slightly sliding down a little hill to the left. After more high pitched whirring followed by a rough re-entry in my oral region my bite felt like it was crunching something. Dr. He told his assistant, “This is why I hate dentures!” He used his little mirror tool and got me to bite an impression sheet, then made a final adjustment. After that the bite was fine but it was just plain awkward to feel that little piece of plastic like a wad of hard, flattened gum against the roof of my mouth. I was told that I would get used to it.

            I asked him to show me how to take it out and put it in. Learning to remove it took a second. I just had to find the upper edge of the front of the plate and pull down, but installing the thing was another story. At first I almost put it in backwards, then I fumbled it several times and had to recover it from my lap, then I even cut my gum a bit when trying to fit the blunted fang in from the wrong angle. When I finally succeeded, sensing my frustration and looking somewhat sympathetic the doctor sat down and asked me if I wanted to get an implant. For a second I thought he was going to offer to actually give me one despite my circumstances. I answered that I would like to but I couldn’t afford it and it’s not covered by either Ontario Works or Green Shield. He didn’t say anything more on the subject.

            He instructed me to always remove the denture before sleeping and to always put it in water when it’s not in my mouth because it will shrink if it gets dry. I asked whether I could brush it while it was in my mouth. He just told me I could try it. I wondered about my Waterpik. At first he didn’t know what I was talking about but when he understood that it was a water flosser he told me that I should stop using it. He thinks that it’s what caused the periodontal pocket that I’d had before surgery last year to get deeper. He added that it’s very controversial because it’s new and there’s no research. I argued that it’s not new and that I was pretty sure it’s been around for decades. He assured me that he advises all of his patients not to use them. Later I looked it up, no matter how I worded the search I couldn’t find a single dentist or anybody else that had anything bad to say about the Waterpik. I was not surprised to find that the oral irrigator was invented in 1962 and led directly to the Waterpik brand fifty years ago. Addressing his claim that there has been no research, I found that there have actually been over fifty studies, with all of them concluding that such a device is beneficial for oral care.

            I stopped at No Frills on the way home, where I bought several items to fit me annual temporary vegetarian diet which began on Wednesday.

            When I got home there was a Facebook message from Nick Cushing, saying he was in the neighbourhood, so I called him and he came over. I showed him my new tooth and he said he was disappointed that it looked normal. He took my picture but it didn’t feel natural to give a toothy smile on demand, so I didn’t.

            He recorded me reading the parts of two different characters from the same story. One was Todd Lehr, an undercover agent infiltrating a bumbling crime family and the other was radioactively modified humanoid rat that is also an informer. For the rat I tried to imitate Dustin Hoffman’s character from The Midnight Cowboy. 

Willow

            On Thursday I spent a lot of time writing my journal.

I thought about going out to the supermarket to buy some fruit but decided it that would be too time consuming.

I finally changed the G-string on my guitar, and it sounded grateful.

Martin Heavisides posted the unaired Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series pilot on my Facebook timeline, so I watched it, but then I also watched the longer one that actually aired so that I could make a comparison. Overall I prefer the official premiere because the acting and the dialogue were better, and on account of the fact that that they’d recast the role of Willow in favour of Alyson Hannigan, who was nearly perfect for the part. There are a couple of aspects of the unaired intro that I like. I prefer the way that the first screen appearance of Buffy was with her walking on the campus of Sunnydale High School for the first time. I also liked the fact that the action started earlier. 

Buffy

            On Wednesday morning the humidity was driving my guitar crazy. It was going out of tune after every couple of songs. Especially the G-string, which is frayed and about to break was slipping below pitch very often. I’d been putting off changing it because of my essay and planned on changing it that day, but with all the other stuff I had to do I didn’t get around to it.

I’d been so busy working on my essay over the last few days that I hadn’t had time to get my rent money together. I had also put off doing my laundry for the same reason and so two days in a row I had to wear ragged underwear. So on Wednesday at around noon I rode down to King and Dufferin to get my rent. The night before that I had almost bought a bag of Macintosh apples at Freshco but when I was in the checkout line-up I noticed that some of them were going bad and gave them back to the cashier. So on Wednesday when I left the bank, I was thinking of buying some fruit, and since I didn’t want to go back to Freshco I thought I’d ride along King to see if the No Frills at Jameson had re-opened. The windows were still covered up and the apologetic signs about their need to fix the roof as well as the signs about their shuttle service to the other No Frills at Lansdowne and Dundas were still up. Three months seems like a long time.

            Looking it up I found a couple of articles about how much the closure of Vi’s No Frills in lower Parkdale inconveniences the poor elderly. Sometimes the shuttle is not so good for people with walkers or wheelchairs and so they spend extra money for food and other necessities at convenience stores. Some people are paranoid that it’s all a ruse to sell the property for condo developments. It turns out that there are three No Frills stores closed for renovations right now in Toronto, but the company assures the public that all of them will re-open.

            I went home to get my laundry ready but remembered that I was out of plastic garbage bags. Then I remembered that the last time I rode to the Laundromat the garbage bag got ripped open when it caught in my front wheel. I put my clothing and bedding in two extra large cloth bags and tied the handles in knots so they wouldn’t dangle too far down while I was riding.

            I stopped at the liquor store buy a can of beer and was glad that they were stocked up with Creemore.

            I finished my chilli at dinner and watched three episodes of Leave It To Beaver. One of them, for the first time, was interesting enough to not delete. It opened with Beaver and his friend Larry passing a cop that was giving a woman a ticket for illegal parking. She said to him, “I just went in the store for five minutes to pick up a package! I know the sign says ‘No Parking’ but why would they have no parking in front of a store when people have to go in the store? If the city wants ‘No Parking’ signs around why don’t they put them where people don’t park?” Then Beaver says to Larry, “When I was little I wanted to be a policeman, but I don’t wanna be one anymore!” “How come Beaver?” “I don’t think I’d like ladies yellin at me all the time.”

            The story was interesting because it brought to light some middle class prejudice on the part of the mother in the Cleaver family, which to some extent was reconciled in the end. Beaver overheard his father complaining about the bills and saying that if it kept up they were going to end up in the poor house. Beaver then went to ask Wally what the poor house was. He told him that they read about it in Charles Dickens and how everybody wears rags there. Then when Henry Fletcher, the garbage collector came by, Beaver noticed that he was wearing a ragged coat and Beaver asked him if he was poor. Henry answered that he was a long ways from being the richest man in town. “Then do you live in a poor house?” “No, I live in a house on the other side of town. It’s no mansion, but it’s no poorhouse either. It’s right along side of my junk yard.” “Do you have kids and everything?” “Sure, four of them! Two boys and two girls.” “And a wife?” “Yeah!” Then Beaver declared, “If that’s bein poor it’s real neat!” Henry laughed and responded, “Well it’s not bad Beaver! Say, I got a boy about your age. Why don’t you come over and visit us sometime?” “Can I come today?” “Well, I guess you could come along with me in the truck, if it’s okay with your mom.” “She’s not hear, but I can ask my dad!” So he ran in the house and excitedly asked Ward if he could go. Ward was reluctant at first but said it was okay and so Beaver left with Henry. When June came home and found out, she was concerned about Beaver having gone off with Mr. Fletcher and complained that they didn’t even know where the Fletchers lived. Ward said, “Sure we do! They live over the other side of Euclid Avenue by the dump.” She suddenly became even more worried. “Ward, the Beaver isn’t playing in a dump is he?” Ward thought for a second and said, “Probably, and probably having the time of his life too!” Then he reminisced about how when he was a kid his friend and he used to take their 22s to the dump and shoot rats. He wasn’t helping put June at ease. She frowned and stared at him for a moment, then said, “Rats?” “They build their nests in the trash. I remember one; he must have been as big as a terrier! He …” Then he turned and saw the look on June’s face and he shut up. “Ward, you let the Beaver go out and play with rats?” “June, I’m sure he’s doing nothing of the sort, and anyway the Fletchers don’t live in the dump, they just live near the dump.” “Well if I was here I wouldn’t let him leave his nice clean house and go out in some garbage truck!” Suddenly Wally ran downstairs and said, “Mom! Dad! Look out the window! Beaver just drove up in a Rolls Royce!” It was an antique Rolls Royce truck with tow equipment on the back. Beaver came home excitedly recounting what a great day he’d had. June started slapping the dirt off him and exclaimed, “Beaver! Look at your clothes! Nothing bit you did it?” “No mom! We found some old bedsprings and we were jumpin up and down on them! And look, I found this really neat old hairbrush!” “Beaver, you throw that right away!” “But gee mom, it’s still real good! It’s got all its bristols!” She looked at him in dismay and declared, “Beaver, I’ll bet you had no lunch at all!” “Oh sure I did! Their mom made a whole pile of Swift Cheese sandwiches and she let us eat’em out in the junkyard! She’s real neat! She lets kids do what they wanna do!” There was a loud moment of silence with looks exchanged between June and Ward, with her face looking slightly insulted and his looking amused. Then Beaver piped in, “And ya know what else, Mom? They said I could come over tomorrow, and even said I could bring Wally there!” Wally looked at his parents hopefully. June hesitated and said, “Well, Beaver, I don’t want you to go over there tomorrow.” “Gee, why not mom?” “Well, I just don’t want you to!” “Gee, that’s not a good reason at all!” June, in desperation looked to Ward, who came to the rescue by suggesting, “Why don’t you have the Fletcher boys come over here tomorrow?” “Heck, there’s nothing to do around here! Is there Wally?” His brother agreed, “No, there’s really not nothin!” Ward insisted, “You don’t want to wear out your welcome, so tomorrow you have the Fletcher boys over here.”  Beaver agreed and then he and Wally went upstairs. Then June said to Ward, “About those Fletcher boys coming over here tomorrow …” “June, I’m sure there isn’t anything wrong with Henry’s kids!” “Oh, I’m sure there isn’t! I just hope they don’t bring a rat with them!” The next day while June was preparing lunch for the not yet arrived young guests, she confided in Ward that, “I hope those Fletcher boys aren’t, you know, rough.” “Oh, I don’t think so! Henry’s a pretty solid guy!” Then she suddenly looked more worried. “Ward, this is Sunday! You don’t suppose he’ll bring them over in that Rolls Royce tow truck do you!” “Why not? It might add a little class to the neighbourhood!” Meanwhile Beaver and Wally were worried about what they could find to do with the Fletcher kids around the boring Cleaver home. Another antique car pulled up and the Fletcher boys got out. They were extremely clean-cut and polite. The visitors found the Cleaver home exciting and interesting. They had a tree to climb in their front yard and lots of grass. Suddenly the older Fletcher boy lay down in the grass, exclaiming how neat it felt. Then his brother got down beside him and agreed, “Hey! It does feel neat!” Beaver and Wally looked at each other, shrugged and joined them. Pete Fletcher then asked, “Hey! Do you guys ever just lie out here and think about stuff?” Beaver answered, “Me and Wally don’t do much thinkin.” Then the boys went into the garage. The Fletchers were impressed with that too and the fact that Beaver and Wally had a box of their own tools. Wally showed them the shoeshine box that he’d failed to finish and confessed that he hadn’t been able to get it to go together right. Pete looked at it and told him, “You’re supposed to make mortise joints.” Then he started showing him how it was done. When it was time to have lunch, Wally thought they might like to eat their sandwiches in the garage but they wanted to eat with Wally and Beaver’s parents because their father was an “all right guy” and because their mom looked like a “movie star”. That night, when June and Ward came in to say good night to the kids, Wally asked Ward if they could build some stuff together and Beaver told June, “Mom, you really are pretty! There’s a lot of movie stars that don’t look half as good as you do!” Ward and June went downstairs with the nicest feeling they’d had in a long time.

            This mid-second season story is the best-written one that I’ve watched so far in the series. When I checked the author I found that it was John Whedon, who had written a few others. I was very curious if there was a relation between John Whedon and Joss Whedon, who created the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Angel”, “Firefly” and “Dollhouse” TV series and wrote and directed two Avengers movies. Sure enough, John Whedon was Joss Whedon’s grandfather. 

Bay Wolf

            On Tuesday I got up at 4:00 and after yoga I only practiced two songs before jumping into the final stretch of my essay. I still hadn’t incorporated all of my hand written notes into the paper, but was starting to shape up to look more like an essay. As is usually the case, some of the best ideas popped up during those final hours. My brain batteries needed recharging by around 11:00, so I took a one hour nap and then worked steadily for the next six and a half hours. I finally got all of the relevant information from my notes into the paper and then tried to organize the thing into an essay with an introduction and a conclusion. I did all my citations, printed the essay and got ready to leave. As I was heading along College, shortly after it occurred to me that this was the first of three times in this course that I’d ridden to deliver an essay over dry land, it started to rain. Not much though. I arrived at class just as the credits were rolling for the first movie. George had shown “The Decline of the American Empire”, which is the first movie he’s brought that I’ve actually seen. I gave George my essay and commented that if I’d had less time it might have been better. He reassured me that it was probably fine and based on what he’d already read in the attachment that I’d sent him, I would probably do better than I thought.
            He handed me a copy of my poem, “Killing Jar”, which I’d emailed him a few weeks before as a matter of interest because I’d thought it tied in with the “O for orature” part of a lecture that he gave on “VOICE”. I hadn’t asked him to critique the piece, but George had scattered it with checkmarks and underlining to show what he liked:

Poems are a class of writing that came before reading
on wings known as verses whose rhythmic beating 
gave them flight through language on currents of singing
to fertilize minds with the pollen of meaning.

Many poems migrate over long distances
crossing borders or morphing to other languages
Poems feed on arousal, long walks on the beach, rolls in the hay,
relationship feces, desolation and decay.

Many species of poem can live for centuries on one single carcass 
and the nutrients that are collected from solitude’s detritus
are frequently offered as a nuptial present to lovers
during mating, along with the poeticspermatozoa.

Poems maintain territories known as genres
and chase away others that try to cross over
Many poems use camouflage to survive 
with their surface meaning being only a disguise 

Before the fifteenth century all poems could fly
but they were sucked out of the musical sky
by the vacuum machine of Joe Gutenberg 
and pressed flat and dead inside of the printed word 

Because it’s hard to see beauty when it’s flying around
it is very important all poems be earthbound
in such a way that they can be enjoyed and read
so of course for this reason poems must be [made dead] – George wrote “Awkward”

You’ll need a spreading board of paper and pins of punctuation
and a display case called a book to show off your poem collection.
The easiest way to put poems to death 
is in a killing jar also known as a manuscrypt.

Poems in their efforts to be able fly once more
batter their bodies inside a killing jar 
and in this way damage their delicate verses 
so it is best to stun them by removing their rhyming organ. 

Poems are generally pressed and preserved on paper
with a complex medium of particulate matter,
solvents, pigments, dyes, resins, lubricants, surfactants, 
solubilizers and fluorescents known as ink. 

Collecting poems is a fun activity for me and you,
and poem collections have artistic value!
And the poems we kill really suffer no more pain  
then the bugs that we crush with our feet every day. 

Collecting poems connects us not only to the poem
but to the flora and carrion it fed upon
to the context of its existence when it was alive
surrounded by language predators and parasites.

Requiring just nets, killing jars, titles and printers,
all of which can be bought for just a few dollars,
it leads to marvelous poetry collections,
that help children to revel in classification.

Nothing has ever rivalled poem collection
because putting songs in suspended animation
destroys the distractions of musicality
and turns kids into little murderers of poetry.

            George mentioned that he was heading for Niagara Falls the next day, which led me to ask him something that I’d been wondering about for a while. How does he find time to write with all of his travelling around? “Do you write on the plane?” He nodded and confirmed, “I write on the plane, in my hotel room or on the train.” We both agreed that trains are good places to write.
            I was disappointed to hear George mention that he had movies planned for our final class. I had suggested that we have a poetry reading. He had said he would consider it and reaffirmed that he was still considering it, but it didn’t sound like it was going to happen.
            George was trying to decide whether to pack it in and go home, but he counted the papers he’d received and decided that he couldn’t leave until he’d gotten five more. The other movie he’d brought to show was “Beowulf and Grendel”, based on the Old English poem. I told him that I’d like to see a parody that combined “Bay Watch” and “Beowulf” and call it “Bay Wolf”. George declared that he would definitely like to see that. I didn’t elaborate at the time, but my idea is that the head lifeguard would turn into a surfing werewolf during the full moon and he would have to fight a humanoid sea monster that was coming in at night and slaughtering all the surfers.
            "Boewulf and Grendel" had a lot of striking scenery. I didn’t even recognize that the lead actors were Gerard Butler and Sarah Polley. George and I were trying to figure out where it was shot. I was thinking Labrador while he guessed Greenland. He was closer to being right since it turned out to be Iceland. The visuals were good but the dialogue was lame and the pacing very slow, at least up till 21:00 when we stopped watching.
            I stopped at Freshco on the way home, since, because I’d been busy with my essay for the last few days I was very low on supplies. I bought grapes, bread, coconut milk, canned peaches and Old Dutch potato chips. It was a relief to have my essay all done and to know that all I had left to write till the end of the term was poetry, so I stayed up till 1:00, to soak it all in.