Ginsberg

            On Saturday morning I didn’t go to the food bank because I was scheduled to work for a photography class at OCADU from 11:00 to 13:00. When I got there though at around 10:45, the instructor. Surendra Lawoti told me it would be about an hour before they needed me. I went out in the hall, tried the door of a nearby studio and was surprised to find it unlocked. I went in, read some poems by William Carlos Williams and then deliberately dozed a bit in a chair with my feet up because I didn’t want to be drowsy while I was posing later. That seemed to be enough to freshen me up.
            After 45 minutes I went back to the photography class. Surendra was still looking at his students’ homework so I sat down and read the rest of the Williams poems in my book and then started on Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”. Although I have heard and read bits of the work over the years, I confess that I’d never actually read it. What an amazing poem! It actually reminds me of some of my own stuff. I didn’t get very far into it though before it was time to pose. I only worked for the last hour of the class. It was mostly a lighting demonstration.
            I’d had problems with Surendra in the past because he’d been initially a bit too hands on, in the sense of trying to physically move me into position and also in touching my face with the light meter. I’d complained about it back to Tracy, the model coordinator and she sent a note to inform him that models were not to be touched.
            When Tracy booked me for this gig I found her wording puzzling. She said, “I recall you had some issues with Surendra and given that there will be a light meter involved again, let me know if you’d prefer not to take the job”. I replied that since it’s unacceptable to touch models with the light meter and Surendra has been informed of that, why should I worry about the light meter? The way she’d put it made it sound as if school policy had changed and that if I didn’t want to be touched I should turn the gig down. She got back to me that the school policy has not changed and so I took the gig.
            Surendra was actually very careful this time not to touch me with the instrument and even made sure he told his students not to do so as well. For the most part they didn’t, except out of awkwardness in dealing with a model and a light meter for the first time. They all seemed to appreciate working with a professional model.
            As I was leaving Surendra told his students that their next assignment was called “Hello Stranger!” They would have to approach and ask a stranger if they could photograph them.

It's Autumn and the Furnace Pipes Are Calling!

            On Friday morning during song practice I was looking outside and I saw a few snowflakes. Then there were more and more until there was a full-fledged first snowfall. It wasn’t surprising that it would snow in November but the first few occasions tend to consist of a few flakes coming down, looking like confused and lost out-of-towners that had gotten detached from their tour group, then they melt and disappear on the concrete. This time though the Dollarama parking lot was covered in white and the wind was blowing spiralling ghosts of powder along Queen Street. Of course since the ground wasn’t frozen it all went away when the sun came up, but it was an impressive first snow nonetheless.
            That night when I was putting my bike out in the hall to get ready to go to work, David came in. He said he had a bike light for me if I wanted. I told him I’d take it if he didn’t need it. It’s a Via Velo front light that takes two AA batteries instead of two little CR2032 disk batteries like the dollar store flashers use. Plus it could also double as a flashlight when it’s on steady mode. I didn’t put it on my bike yet because the one that I have is still working fine. I worked nearby for Artists 25 at Brock and Dundas. It was the first of a three-week nude pose that Cy Strom had hired me for on behalf of the guy that usually runs that session. Cy showed me a little stepladder that he thought it might be interesting for me to pose with. But it had a parabolic handrail that made it impossible to sit on and I explained that standing with one foot on it for a 2.5-hour session would mean that most of my weight for that time would be on the other leg. When I was in my 30s I could handle things like that but not anymore. Tom Phillips, one of the founders of Artists 25, and the only one of them left, tried to demonstrate how one could actually sit on that step ladder. As soon as he lifted his octogenarian leg and threaded it through the parabola at the top of the ladder I looked at Cy and commented, “We might end up having to call the paramedics to get him out of there.” Once Tom had his foot through he realized he’d made a mistake. We had to help him get out again.
            There were four members that came to the session. One of them expressed agreement with the theory that Vincent Van Gogh did not commit suicide because it wouldn’t have been possible to shoot himself in the chest at the angle that the bullet went in. I said, “There was a second gunman on the grassy knoll!” I’d always thought that Van Gogh had been schizophrenic but it turns out that is not one of the many theories. The most likely was probably that he was bi-polar but another theory, which this lady agreed with, is that he had been drinking too much absinthe.
            The usual pay for posing 2.5 hours at Artists 25 is $45, which is the lowest rate in town. Most places pay $20 an hour with a three-hour minimum. That’s what Peter; the guy that runs the Friday sessions pays. He’s not supposed to because whatever money doesn’t go to the model is put towards the rent of the studio. Cy complained to me that he has sometimes had to put money in out of his own pocket to cover the rent, plus he said that it makes him look cheap for paying $45 to models for the Thursday sessions that he runs. I got $60, but a lot of it was in change.
            When I got home I could hear that same squeaking noise that’s been bugging me for the last few days. I had developed a theory about it that I decided at that time to test. There are two vertical pipes that run up through the middle of my apartment. They appear from a hole in the left side of the mantle in my kitchen area and rise to disappear in my ceiling. I assume they come from the basement and carry steam, since they are hot when the furnace is on. I walked over to put my ear close to the pipes and sure enough, that was the source of the squeaky hum. Or rather it is one of the sources. I noticed after that that the noise was coming from the pipes leading to all the radiators in my apartment and that’s why it sounded like the noise was coming from outside the building. It’s actually a quadraphonic serenade from hell. I don’t recall it sounding like that last winter so I guess the furnace is getting old.

Thinking Outside of the God

            I didn’t have to go to philosophy class on Thursday because it was still Reading Week, but I made use of the hour by reading Anselm’s Monologian and Proslogion. I’m supposed to analyze and compare the two for the essay that’s due at the end of November. The Monologian argues that if you can imagine the greatest good then it must prove god exists while the Proslogian says that the greatest thing that can be thought has to exist because if it didn’t exist it wouldn’t be greater than a thought.
            In the evening I had to go out to the supermarket to buy yogourt. It was just starting to rain lightly as I was heading out to Freshco. I bought a bag of apples and another of oranges so that I could compare them. I’ve concluded that they are like apples and oranges. I also got some grapes but I had a hard time finding a bag with ones that weren’t soft. I picked up some cheddar cheese and a bag of barbecue spiced sunflower seeds as well. It was fully raining when I left the supermarket but I made it home without getting soaked.

Would Robert Frost Have Written As Much About Snow if His Last Name Had Been "Lava"?

            On Wednesday morning there was a strange, squeaking sound going off periodically outside. It was not extremely high pitched. It was something like the sound of a streetcar turning or that of the death rattle of robot raccoon road kill. At first I thought that the electronic sound effects of the walk signal at the corner might have been malfunctioning, but when I stuck my head out of the window it didn’t sound closer. Maybe it was the coming from the crosswalk a block away on Brock.
            I was out of fruit so I rode down to No Frills where I got a couple of bags of grapes. I also bought a bag of chicken legs, some Rubschlager bread, Sunlight detergent, baking soda, a few other things and a package of stainless steel scrubbers. I still had a scrubber at home but when they get old then they start to break up and I find little bits of wire coming off on a pan. I have to be very careful to clean the pan also with a brush afterwards so I don’t end up with metal strips in my food, which fortunately has not happened yet.
            When I got back I realized that I’d forgotten to buy cereal and yogourt so I walked over to Fullworth. I don’t know how that place has stayed in business for so long since it’s empty every time I go in there. The store is very cheap for a lot of things but not for normal food items like yogourt and cereal. Since I was there already and didn’t want to ride back to the supermarket I spent $5 on a box of Raisin Bran. I stopped to buy a can of Creemore at the liquor store on my way home.
            In the evening I didn’t go to English class because it was Reading Week, but at home I spent three hours reading the poetry of Robert Frost three times for each poem and one of them aloud. 
            Since I’ve been watching the late 50s TV show of Mike Hammer it totally slipped my notice that Darren McGavin, the star of the show is the same guy that played the grouchy father in the film, “A Christmas Story”.

God Can't Be the Greatest, Since Alice is the Greatest

            On Tuesday morning I didn’t have to go to Philosophy class because this is Reading Week. I think that it was because of this that I felt so sleepy while typing my lecture notes from the previous Thursday. I worked until 9:30 and then went back to bed. I got up at around 10:45 and finished my transcription. Then when I tried to upload my notes to my blog, the HTML had coded in a background that blanked out much of the text. I had to spend an hour editing the HTML until the text was normal. This usually only happens when I paste text from the internet into my documents and so I avoid doing that. I don’t know what caused it this time unless it was the forward arrow symbols that I pasted in from the character map.
            I didn’t leave home at all, even though I ran out of fruit. I got caught up on my journal, did the dishes and then in the afternoon I felt sleepy again. I took another siesta and got up feeling more refreshed than from the one I’d taken earlier.
            I looked at the two topics for the final Early Medieval Philosophy essay and decided that it would be easier to write about Anselm of Canterbury than on Ghazali. I read Anselm’s Monologian twice, then copied it into a Word document and pared it down to its essential points. He thinks he’s proven god exists by saying that for anything that is good or great there is something better and greater and so there must be something supremely good or great of which nothing is better and greater. But just because something is the greatest it doesn’t mean that it’s the cause of all the lesser greatnesses.
            I watched an episode of Mike Hammer in which a dress shop owner was bugging the offices of a prominent psychiatrist to find incriminating evidence with which to blackmail rich female patients into buying his dresses on the threat that he’d make their indiscretions public.

Changing the Clock

         

            On Monday morning I lurched out of bed at the sound of the alarm. I washed, got dressed and was beginning the first backward bend of the sun salutation when I suddenly remembered that I’d forgotten again to turn my flying saucer clock back so the alarm wouldn’t go off at 4:00. I reset the clock and went back to bed to sleep for another hour. The problem was though that I’d fully dislodged myself from sleep, even though I’d only gotten three and a half hours of slumber. It was actually physically uncomfortable to just lie there but I made use of the time by thinking about how I was going to put the finishing touches on my Shab-e She’r review.
            After yoga, when I’d started song practice I noticed that film trucks were parking on Dunn Avenue and a crew was gathering with their equipment beside the Capital Espresso. I saw one of the city cops they’d hired to direct traffic, getting out of her car, which she’d parked illegally in the Dollarama parking lot. I guess cops don’t get to drive police cars to work when the job is on a film set even though they are in uniform.
            The handle on the stem on the plunger for my french press broke, but I have a few plungers from previous french presses, so I changed the stem. I also discovered that another plunger had an extra filter so I added that to the old one.
            I spent most of the day typing out my lecture notes on T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”.

Pushing

            On Sunday I was pushing my father’s car around the city because I didn’t have a licence to drive it. I don’t know why I didn’t just walk but it seemed pretty easy to push the car in this dream. I went to a comic shop that I’d wanted to visit because I was looking for a certain comic. I woke up when my alarm went off before anything really happened in the dream.
            I finished my yoga and was about to begin song practice when I realized that we’d gone off Daylight Savings Time and that I’d actually gotten up an hour early. It was too late to do anything about it then, so I went ahead and sang my songs at 5:12 instead of 6:12.
            I needed to shower and I wanted to shave, but I was out of shaving cream so in the late morning I went over to the Dollarama. There was no line-up for the one cashier but she was serving a couple with a lot of items in their shopping cart. I don’t think I’ve ever bought more than three items at a time at the Dollarama. I can’t imagine what I’d fill a shopping cart with.
            I spent most of the day working on a graphic that I wanted to post along with my latest food bank adventure. I had so many other things to do, like finish my review of Shab-e She’r and start working on my philosophy essay but once I had the idea for the image I couldn’t quit until it was done. I took a picture of a corn on the cob man that I’d found and dressed him up like Mr Peanut. It took hours to complete.