Solomon (Remix)

Dedicated to Frank Faulk

 

-You heard this?

-I don't know.

-I'll put it on. It's Frank Sinatra.

-LPs are sexier than CDs.

-Give it a listen.

-Oh.

-Any room for me on that couch?

-Lots.

-No scrinching?

-Nope, none.

-You have to listen. Listen to his voice.

-Dreamy.

-Are you the woman of my dreams?

-Ho ho I don't know!

-I think you got some ideas.

-You don't even know me.

-Maybe not.

-No, no, we're getting acquainted.

-Do you want to be acquainted?

-Uh, yeah. Is this your place?

-Yes, it's cheap, miraculously.

-It's better than my room.

-Dupont?

-Yeah, on Dupont.

-Do you feel?

-What?

-Are you comfortable?

-Yes, very, no doubt, fuh.

-The record's nice.

-You have a guitar.

-Are you left-handed?

-No.

-I strung it for me, leftie.

-I can play.

-Guitar?

-Yeah, my family, we all play.

-You know how to play a guitar?

-Yeah.

-Can you teach me stuff?

-What?

-Can you give me lessons?

-This is getting too fucking sick. Get off me! Is this all about you getting guitar lessons? Did I leave the Rivoli with you to get asked to tell you how to play the guitar? This story ends now.

 

*

 

She woke up with a shout. Her husband asked her quickly: "What is it?" She said: "My God, what a dream! I was in a boat on the ocean, and from out of nowhere a great whale emerged nearby, and took to the air, and was flying over the boat, about to crush it."

As she arose and tidied herself and ate some breakfast, the dream started fading from her memory, and, by the time she got to work, at her radio station, it was no longer present to her at all, which was all to the good, considering what happened next.

The big lobby had all been re-arranged for an audition call. A big barrier separated the entrance from the elevators and the coffee place, and she had to prove she worked there in order to cross it.

However, on the other side, there were more auditionees, changing their clothes. She was pushing past them when some man spoke to her. The started on a conversation; he thought she was another auditionee, and it took her so long to convince him she wasn't, she started getting annoyed, him looking down at her, and she woke up with a shout.

 

*

 

Test

 

"This is an examination of general estimation. You have all shift to complete it."

I read the three essay questions, which appeared to have nothing to do with work. I felt like I was at university again. A couple paragraphs of text, with broad questions afterwards. It asked about intentions, motivations, vocabulary, and, almost as an afterthought, meaning.

Unfortunately, I had some other work to do that could not be ignored. So, I went off to do some of the other work, and I returned in an hour.

The examiner had noticed my absence, and she said to me: "If you don't have time, J--, you can take the examination another day."

"No, I'm fine."

I wrote and wrote. When I write essays, I start at the beginning and keep going once I've run out of language. Thus, I'd been at work on the first question for a couple hours when the secondary examiner said: "They'll all have to be typed, you know."

I said: "Typed?"

He pointed across the room. "The machines are over there."

"Will we be judged for our typistry?"

He smiled. "No, not really."

I ran out of time. I ran out of time.

 

*

 

Paint

 

I returned to the paint store the next day. I got the attention of a clerk, and I explained.

"I purchased this outdoor paint yesterday, and I have noticed the can doesn't have any paint in it."

He looked at the can skeptically. "It's latex emerald, isn't it?"

"No, actually it's not."

"What is it, then?"

"It's--and I could be a bit off--it's a can of seaweed, tomatoes, and brine."

"Oh, dear." His attitude was blankly disbelieving.

"Yes, it's not emerald latex, or latex emerald, or whatever they call it in your business. It looks like seaweed, tomatoes, and brine."

"May I take a look at it?" (He was trying to move the conversation along.)

I put the can down on the counter that separated us and pushed it towards him. He produced from his pocket a brass lid-lifter or whatever it's called. He pried under the lid and pulled it off. He looked in the can. "It's latex emerald," he said.

I looked. "Ah, yes, you're right. How could I have made such a mistake?"

"Good day, sir."

I returned hope and opened the can again. Sure enough, it was filled with seaweed, tomatoes, and brine.

 

*

 

The Gutter Story

 

I had a scam attempted on me the last two days. Guy bangs on the door, says he'll clean out the gutters over my porch, for $50. I think that sounds good, and agree. Some hour goes by, ON MY BIRTHDAY, and I'm waiting. Guy, called 'Tim', finally comes back, sez 'Tomorrow at eleven, would that be be good?' I say: Sure.

This morning, after having my BIRTHDAY PARTY, I find them outside. A ladder and everything. I have no choice but to play dumb, because I'm a dummy. So while they're up on this ladder, I pull my recycling bin around back, which takes a bit of time since I have to circle the block. When I get back, the guy not named Tim tells me that there's all kinds of rot in the roof over my porch! Terrible! I tell not-'Tim' I can maybe talk to the owner about it, give me your card. 'The porch itself is a wreck, you think you can do that too?' 'Oh yeah, sure.' (At some point during this, I look up to notice that the gutter is still filled with junk.)

I drag the compost bin out back, down the way to the back of the house, and when I come back, Tim and not-Tim have vanished.

I tell all this to Mary, and she sez: "We had that roofing taken care of last year."

I went to the front room to look out at the roofing. Yes, it was solid and secure.

Moral of the story is: Don't be stupid like me!

 

POSTSCRIPT: Having thought about the event for a week, I have come to realize the more important aspects are that 'Tim' seemed very concerned about whether or not someone would be home at eleven o'clock on the second day, and he also said we should keep our doors locked (for some reason or not). I've come to think they weren't planning on doing some work on the front of the house; in fact, they were planning on ransacking our house for loot. Their whole operation was to find out when no-one was home in order to break in and steal all my Schubert CDs along with everything else of value. That was why they vanished so quickly; they knew a futile task when they saw one. It took me a week to figure this out.

 

*

 

Management Lesson

 

Outside, the birds were raising a ruckus under the blue sky. Inside, some training was taking place. The teacher and the student were working away.

-Explain to me: How would you respond if an incendiary event took place?

-What's that?

-We have a long way to go. How would you respond if a fire broke out?

-I said loudly: There's a fire! Everyone leave the building!

-No, you shouldn't. Rather: A conflagration is actualized! Evacuate the locus!

-Ah, right. Is 'right' okay?

-Yes, it is beneficent.

-This stuff isn't easy.

-Not facile at all.

-How much longer--er, what duration do you predict will have to eventuate before perfection is attained?

-Perhaps a month, inclusively reckoning.

-'A conflagration is actualizing!' Wouldn't that be the more perfected tense usage?

-Ha! Perhaps less than a month!

-Will my certificate be personal?

-Yes, it will have your personal nomen on it.

-My very own cognomen?

-Precisely. Once that occurs, you will possess a document stating you are prepared for middle management.

Exterior the cubicle, the avian class were eventuating a clamour beneath the cerulean airs. Interior the cubicle, instruction was of the event. Pupil and master generated knowledge important and promotional.

 

*

 

Whatever, Or

 

Whatever could have happened to all the girls I've loved?

Where is K. W.? I loved her when I was six, and she was so beautiful. I have no idea where she got to.

Then I loved T.-L., whom I loved more than any other girl. She was butch, but curious. When I last had correspondence with her, she, with a kid or two, had gone dyke, which was not a surprise to me.

At Ryerson RTA, I didn't like any of the girls. Some I had bits of hots for, but no. (Except for Ph., whom I'd runaway with to a South Sea island now.)

Then there were four or five other girls whose names I can't recall. How can I not recall the names of the women I've loved?

(Keep in mind here that I am cr azily happy to be sharing my life with M. MacD. I totally lucked out to be with such a honey.)

C. L., alas. I was in love with her (though I didn't quite know it) and it seems she was in love with me. If things had been a little different.... If we hadn't have been so in love with being drunk and high.... she was so beautiful, big brown hair.

She kissed me when I told her I really wanted to be kissed by her. That was on Avenue Road, a little north of Bloor, on a warm spring night. Some joker passing by whistled a woo-hoo.

She left Toronto to go back to Edmonton. Because she was too fucked up.

Meanwhile, I went off to the Univ// C. came back, because she was in a band called The Quitters. We smoked some hash in a park. It was all nice, but very melancholy, since we both knew we should have gotten married.

Meanwhile, I went off to University, and on the second day this pretty girl liked the desert boots I was wearing. (Sometimes I feel sorry for M., knowing that her affection for boots would result in her marrying the rando who stood in them.)

That's it. I still fall in love with girls here and there, almost daily, and I got someone on my mind almost constantly, but there's some story among the thousand stories I've read, could be a play, in which the patriarch sits down in his chair and says: "I have arrived."

 

*

 

In a long-forgotten zone of existence, the battle continues. In the lonely South Pacific, a man and a woman met. His name, given to him by the tree-dwellers, was Tarzan. (It had something to do with Tanzania, so goes the urban myth. How the tree-dwellers knew about Tanzania is anyone's guess.) The woman--Jane, from a very foreign land--Duluth--crashed there when she was trying to be the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific. They fell in love, despite the war Tarzan was involved in, and since he hadn't seen combat in decades, the raised a family. The first child, Mowgli, knew the animals by name, and he would disappear with them for weeks at a time. Their second child, the girl, was a changeling: with a far-away look, she looked to the sky to insist she was from somewhere very far away. They called her Princess.

In the midst of their joys and their fears, word came from the monkeys that something terrible was happening on another island. Tarzan and Jane built a raft, and, after many months, reached another island, an island familiar to you and me, and they became very famous. The rest is history.

 

*

 

It's About Time!

 

I thought I was running late, so I asked a woman at the bus-stop: "Pardon me, do you have the time?"

She said: "That is a very difficult question, middle-aged man. When you asked me that question, some seconds ago, it was very much a different time. I would have to take whatever time I could come up with and take away ten seconds or so to give you the time of your question. Or you may be asking about some future time; but since time, as far as anyone knows, goes on forever, I wouldn't be able to tell you what you were inquiring about, seeing as there's a seemingly infinite number of possibilities. Perhaps you were talking about Greenwich Mean Time, or better yet cosmic time, which has more intriguing answers. Since relativity and gravitation affect the flow of time, the question is even murkier, though all those matters are only of interest in accord to the past. We are a certain distance away, and since sound waves travel rather slowly, I don't think I could measure the time you asked me the question."

In the meantime, I'd pulled out my big clock. "Ah, 9:45."

 

*

 

North or South?

 

I was at the Greyhound bus station, in some place or another. I looked at the board, trying to get an idea of directions. I saw there were two buses leaving in the next half-hour. One was going north, and the other was going south.

I had to decide, soon before I finished my bottle of scotch, which way to go. If I went north, I'd be getting closer to my father, though it was still conceivable I would still out of his reach. But--if I went south--I would be irreconcilably independent.

I stashed the bottle, and bought a ticket for south.

I finished the scotch, tossed the bottle in the trash, and got on the 71 bus, which rolled off out of the terminal.

On the highway, the scenery started looking familiar. I stumbled up to the bus-driver, and asked him: "Are we going south?"

The bus-driver said: "Nope. This is Highway 51, and we're going north."

"I thought I was going south. I wanted to go south."

"You're on the wrong bus, buddy. Should I let you off at the next stop?"

I stumbled back to my seat. "No," I said to myself.

 

*

 

"Friend"

 

So I got this friend, a good friend, I've known him for forty years, and he used to put up his musings on Facebook; observations and so on, plus reflections on what it's like to be alive. You know, saying things that would be taken as 'deep' if you said them to someone face-to-face.

However, no-one engaged him. I seemed he was being ignored. So, he quit Facebook altogether.*

Meanwhile, I went on using Facebook as a publication tool, not concerned about, what, looks, is that what they're called? Hum hum hum I'll go on and come up with clever though not brilliant stuff, because I'm not brilliant not in the least.

Then, in September or so last year, a friend I know whom I will not name--Geoff Sinclair--puts up a picture of some ice cream cone, saying: "Ah, ice cream!" and he gets some 200 'likes'.

And I get nothing, ever.

Some real sociologists recently showed that social media alienates people. The more you engage, the more sad you feel. So, if you can get shadow-banned by saying: "I hate all you fuckers who like ice-cream!" you'll be better off.

 

*I know he didn't. He's lurking.

 

*

 

Naked

 

Some nine or ten thousand years ago, this Jewish guy ran into a friend of his--also a Jew, so I'll call him 'second Jew'--and he said:

"Wow, I got this thing in my head, it's funny, and I think it's profound too.

"So, way back in the beginning, there were only two people. Man, woman. And they were totally with God. First name basis. Then, somehow, this couple started to become, like, intellectuals. And they started knowing this and that, and then they got self-conscious, so much so that one day God was looking for them, but the man and the woman sensed they'd broken a covenant, so that the couple hid, because they were naked and all, and they didn't want God to see their sexes, which, in this metaphor, stands in for knowledge. And God said: 'Hello, anyone there?'

"And the man and the woman--the first people, understand--called out to God and said: 'We're here, but we're naked. Can you come back later?'

"And God said: 'A-ha! You've turned away from me. From now on, there shall be a divide between us. You have secrets. From me, your maker! You are going to deceive yourselves into thinking that I may not be your God and maker. You, in what you call your nakedness, as if you could be anything other than naked to me, will deceive yourselves, thinking you are not naked to my eyes. I see you, and I can even know when you're deceiving me. Put on some clothes if you want, pack some bags, because I'm tossing you out of this nice place and you'll live in a desert from now on, and it's cold in the desert at night. You've lied to me. How you managed to learn how to lie to me. Yeah, I know that's not a complete sentence.

"'As if your cock and pussy are something I don't know about! As if I didn't give them to you! As if you can hide them from me, your God and maker! You'll believe, with your "knowledge", that we're apart, but it will be a delusion. I will know you, but you'll have to struggle like crazy to know me.'

"The couple are our heritage."

Second Jew says: "Wow, that's pretty good. You should write it down."

First Jew says: "Yeah, but I'll edit it all. Writing is expensive."

 

*

 

This Dream

 

I had without sleeping. More common than you think.

Hermann Broch wrote a whole book about it - The Sleepwalkers. All about how we dream, and dream ourselves into evil. Walk around dreaming, taking our dreams for true.

No complete sentences here.

Don't know what to do to heal me. Maybe love people more - but people, knowing as I am because I'm one of them, are filthy.

All out here: so much bullshit, so much hypocrisy, if you got some sense it makes you hurl. The horror of what we see, if you're not going fucking mad you're not paying attention.

All in insane asylums, all of us. No-one, though, would be left to carry the keys.

Chance - serendipity - Erykah Badu - a Black voice performing Network Peter Finch - our air isn't fit to breathe, our food isn't fit to eat - I should be more mad - I sound like Celine - breathless, crazy - but with hyphens - and soon I'll sleep and dream and pretend I'm not in a nightmare -

Facebook machine contacted me a couple weeks ago - Are you going through a mental-health crisis? (As if insanity isn't a rational response to our current madness.)

"You seem to be having a crisis. Do you want some contacts?"

Poor kids, poor kids, hooked on this Internet drug, can't go outside, can't get into the sack with one another, so afraid they are, so sucked are they on the Internet. All right? Maybe not.

Remember:Remember:Remember: calling up the Hodgson house, to talk to my girlfriend Terri-Lynn - her sister answered, real telephone, left the handpiece off the cradle, then forgot about the phone - an' I had the phone against me, waiting, but I stayed on the line for a long time before giving up, I even whistled at their dog to call attention to the open line.

This the case, as much as we think things are fucked, they are fucked exponentially for the kids? Badly educated, badly fed, breathing rotten air, no real information getting to them, lost, neglected, secretly miserable, used, exploited by their elders for political purposes, tossed up as shields, and I'm being as crazy as I can.

"You think I can tell you what to do? I can't tell you what to do. I'm just an idiot on some screen. But, be angry. Angry!"

 

*

 

This is an old Hindu story that don't fit anywhere. A boy falls in love with the princess, but the King tells him: "If you want to marry the Princess my daughter, you got to go off and find Truth."

So the boy goes off to the plains, talks with the folks, but he doesn't find Truth.

He goes to the mountains, where all the Brahmans are, but it still seems he hasn't found Truth.

Where is truth? As he's wandering, a huge storm happens, and, when he's all wet and despondent, an old crone shows up and takes him to her cottage.

She's crazy-old. Her face is riddled with lines, her eyes are cataracted, her dugs are withered. The boy tells her that he's been looking for Truth.

For the whole night, the hag tells him the Truth. She tells him the real Truth. He listens, and understands.

In the morning, now knowing the Truth, he departs, but, before he does so, he asks: "I should describe you to the court, about whom I got the Truth from. How should I describe you?"

And the old crone says: "Tell them I am young and beautiful."

 

*

 

High Park

 

A dear friend of mine, in the ninth hour of today, wrote to me a little note about her recent religious walks, the first of which involved High Park, and like the texture of tea into which a pastry called a Madeleine has been dipped, those words, 'High Park', made me nostalgic and lachrymose (as if I'm anything other).

I'm limiting myself to the first two scenarios. The later scenes I dare not describe, ever.

I lived for two years a block away from it. (High Park is in the west end of Toronto. It's about two square miles, running from Bloor Street down to the lake, and between High Park Blvd and Etobicoke. In it, there's a huge pond, and even a small zoo in which they keep the smelliest animals they could find.) In 1986 or so, I stayed up all night writing a paper for a sociology class, and just before dawn I, exhaustedly, walked to it, to see the sun rise. All alone, I sat on a bench, and ruminated. The paper had been about nuclear war, and I sat, waiting for the sun, thinking that Ronnie Raygun was going to blow all the beauty up. It seemed certain to me he was going to do it.

Needless to say, that didn't happen.

And then, be still my heart and tears, some seven-or-so years later, I found myself with Cheryl Lancastle, spring it was, sitting on the slope that looked down upon the stage they do Shakespeare plays in the summer. (I can barely believe it really happened.) She was talking about Jack Kerouac, but we were low on wine, so I dashed off across the park, to the liquor store on Howard Park. (I know I did it, but when I look at it, that's some four miles in all. But--I was twenty-two, and four miles isn't very far.) Coming back, through my mind passed a Kerouac thing about how you can't fall down a hill--so I ran down a hill, fast as I could, and I found out you can't fall.

Heartbreak and pain. When I showed up with the wine, it was like I hadn't been on an epic travail, because I really hadn't. She said: "Ah!" and twisted off the cap.

High Park. Everyone has such stories. Everyone has places in their hearts for nostalgia, tea, and Madeleines.

 

Addendum

 

It breaks me to say there's some mis-interpretation going on. I met Cheryl Lancastle at some party or another, and there was immediately some electricity between us. For eighteen months, we were in daily contact. (We were both so young.) I was too stupid to know that when she told me she was a virgin, "but I've done everything else!" was a come-on. Too stupid.

She had this big head of chestnut hair, like nothing I've seen since, wild and crazy. She had a perfect complexion, like crème. She always wore black clothes, because she was shy about her body, but, no doubt I am projecting backwards, and being nostalgic and lachrymose, she should have been my wife of forty years.

However, we were both too fucked up. We were both drinking too much, and smoking too much hash. Totally Tennessee Williams territory, and not in a stage-worthy way.

Every year or so, I try to track her down. Last I knew, she was living in Edmonton again. I'm only left with these delusions--or-maybe--I was just an idiot who could not see she loved me a whole lot, but I was too retarded to see it.

Harsh, but true.

 

Poem

 

On grass, fifty feet from where 'Much

Ado About Nothing' would be played,

I loved her. She said: "More drink!"

And because I loved her, I ran across

The park, as fast as I could, to the store

On Howard Park, to buy us some more wine.

I did not know I was having my best day.

I didn't know I was in love with her.

I ran across the park and up the other side

To get some cheap red wine, mid-priced,

And then I ran back with it to be with her

(Though I did not know I wanted to be with her)

And straight from the bottle we drank it together.

 

When she left Toronto, I wrote her nastily.

Hand-written, so I have no copy.

The morning she left, I wrote her she was horrible.

It was very much like I was in love with her

(But I didn't know it) & I'd been betrayed.

I suppose break-ups are always terrible.

 

Months later, she was in a music band

And she came back to Toronto.

We sat down in a park, and smoked some hash together.

Just like old times.

Then she went her way, and I mine.

 

Call

 

"Hello, hello."

"Hello. You hear me?"

"Yup. What's your business here?"

"I got no business. I'm an old friend of yours, and."

Who the fuck are you?

John Skaife, remember me?

Oh, man, that was so long ago. What you up to?

I've been working at the CBC, archive shit, for more than twenty years. What have you been up to?

Fuck, same old. So what's up with this phone call?

I wrote you some nasty stuff, back when you left, and I don’t think I said sorry.

Yeah, you were a total dick. I fuckin' hated you for months.

I was totally in love with you. Didn't you see that?

Yeah, and you did nothing. Maybe I was in love with you too, but even after I told you I was a virgin, you couldn't do nothing.

Are you saying--

Why would a girl tell a guy she a 'virgin' if she didn't want to get fucked? You are so stupid! We could have been happy together, my chestnut hair and your ginger wilds, but you ruined it. I very much loved you, and you ruined it. Now I'm dead, and you could have saved me, but you didn't.

 

*

 

Land Acko

 

So I go to hear a Bach concert, Tafelmusik, St. Paul's church, Toronto. But, since I haven't been to a concert or anything in the last nine months, I didn't have my favorite gag prepared.

The whole thing started with a land acknowledgement, and they talked about the Iroquois, the Wendat, nomadic folks who set up shop here - for twenty years or so at a time until they'd depleted the soil of nutrients - whereupon they moved on to Mississauga or something like it.

So my joke is: and I may have said it before, but I certainly whispered it Geoff Sinclair at an opera a couple years ago, and that I should have said at the cantata selections - but I had forgotten it - when they go through the various aboriginal tribes who set down here, in Toronto, for a bit of a spell - I say to my friend, be it Geoff or David:

"Why don't they acknowledge the French tribe? They were here for some eighty years before the English came. Do we anglos hate the French that much? Can't even say our town was French? Shouldn't they be included in these speeches?"

 

*

 

Create!

 

I guess every big city has an organization like TIFF. TIFF, since you don't have a clue, is a movie-house in which they mostly play Euro-trash boring movies. If I have to sit through another sensitive well-meaning junk movie, I'll have to give up on the idea that there's any goodness in the world.

However, I got this movie-going friend, and he's, like, constantly trying to get me to go see the crap TIFF is playing, regardless that it's all Netflix-destined garbage. Ooh, a sensitive portrayal of adolescence, so new. Ooh, a political portrayal of adulthood, so novel.

This movie-going friend stood me up on Friday. I bought a couple tickets to see 'Project Hail Mary,' and I prepped (as I like to do) by finding out nothing about it. And the fucker never showed up. I waited for thirty minutes, then it was too late and I don't like being treated shabbily.

Thus--I bought tickets--but he's incapable (maybe) of going to a movie that the elite hasn't found ticket-worthy. (Because it wasn't playing at snob TIFF.) And so, he didn't show up.

I could have eaten the double-price easy, but I've totes stopped going to movies alone. I did that for a long time, but I'm so fucking old now, I want to make an event of it, which involves another person.

Thus, whatever 'Project Hail Mary' is, I'll never see it. My sense of betrayal is so giant, it's infected the movie itself.

1) I'm not innocent. Years ago, I made a date with my brother, and then I forgot he was going to show up at the bookstore on such-and-such a date. Two weeks later, I remembered, and called him. He said, appropriately bitterly: "Oh, it's the guy who stood me up."

2) While I was ranting and raving this morning, saying how much I fucking hated this movie-going friend of mine, throwing my arms all over the place, Mary got all Catholic and told me to be more forgiving. And, yes, I calmed down a little, because--perhaps he fell asleep--maybe he went to the wrong theatre--all that considered--to buy some fucking tickets and then--nothing. Walt Whitman in, I guess, Song of Myself, has the humane line: "Do you know what it's like to be slighted?"

With my hand on an aluminum post, waiting: I don't feel especially forgiving.

 

*

 

Strangers on a Train

 

With my wife, we watched Strangers on a Train, for at least the second time. She said: "I don't remember this at all."

And I didn't say: "That's because you don't care. You lack the ability to understand a simple movie, because it's not about you. It's about something you don't get. We have seen this film before, but you don't recall it, because it's not about you. You'd recall it if it was about you, but it's not about you. Thus, you don't know anything about it, because it's not about you. Say nothing more."

 

*

 

House

 

I live in a house--a mansion, really--that's over two hundred years old. It was constructed by my wife's great-great-great-great-grandfather, I think it was.

The only drawback we discovered, after she'd inherited and we'd moved in, is that there is only one bathroom, with a shower, and its only entrance is through the room in which I sleep. (My wife and I have separate rooms because of our insomnias.) When the place was built, naturally, it didn't have any bathroom; it was a latter-day improvement, by my wife's great-grandfather, and it was only used at night, since the outhouse was built forty yards away, and it gets dark out here in nature.

Everything went along swimmingly for a while. I didn't mind my wife coming into my room at all hours, and we cannot build another bathroom, since it's expensive, what with all the red tape involved in doing anything structural to a designated heritage-house. (We can't even change the exterior colour!)

As I said, everything went along swimmingly for a while, until we noticed how expensive the upkeep was for a mansion with eight bedrooms. So, my wife came up with an idea, and I couldn't argue about it. We would take in campers from nearby Big City. We had a vast lawn, suitable for tents, and we could also put people in the six other bedrooms.

It was not as easy as you would think, though. This led to that and then back to this, and here's what it's like now.

Every morning, troupes of strangers would come into my bedroom and line up at the bathroom. (Campers take a lot of showers since campers have sex all the time, which is one of the central appeals of camping.) They would come in and wake my up, and every morning I was a curiosity to them as I covered myself up to dress, facing the blank wall across from the entrance. I've heard some chuckles, too, as if they thought I'd been doing something which I actually hadn't done.

Thus, in the summer, I have to hold my tongue (for financial reasons) and let this farcical situation continue, with strangers coming in at five in the morning. (Campers like getting up early.)

Sometimes I think I should give up, and get a divorce. However, divorces are expensive, and take, like, over two hundred years to get.

 

*

 

Reasoning[1]

 

We[2] like to think we're all pretty good at reasoning[3]. We can identify colours[4] and textures[5] and the like[6], and we like to think we use the exterior world[7] to furnish our interior worlds[8]. However, we are led astray so easily[9], it's hard to believe it's so[10]. I personally have had beliefs[11] that, over the course of time[12], have turned out to be untrue[13]. Like: Klaatu was actually the Beatles[14], you can hear a woman being murdered in Love Rollercoaster[15], and that matter has only three states[16]. Where's reasoning?[17]

 

*

 

Say You're Sorry

 

It was a mistake, so say you're sorry.

Something went wrong, and you're to blame. Just say you're sorry.

We all make mistakes, and you made a mistake. Simply just say you're sorry.

None of us have a lot of time left, so make right what's wrong. Just simply say you're sorry.

You'd be surprised how forgiving people can be, so simply say you're sorry.

I don't like bring it up and bringing it on as I am able to do. Just say you're sorry.

I can keep this up all day. Week. Month. Year. End it now by saying you're sorry.

There's so many more people you don't know as compared to those you do know. Go easy on everyone and say you're simply sorry.

You're currently in adharma, and you can return to dharma, if only you say you're sorry.

Second chances, we all get second chances practically hurled at us. Just say you're sorry.

From on high, second chances are tossed like lightning. Just simply say you're sorry.

I'm not going to hold my breath any more. Just simply say you're sorry.

It was a mistake, so say you're sorry.

Yes. That's all. "Sorry."

 

*

 

Family Feud

 

‑Two family members, come up, this is the final round. Hello, Judy, Phil. Ready?

‑We're ready, we're ready.

‑We surveyed a hundred households and asked them this question. 'What two English words are never used in the same sentence?'

‑Bing!

‑Phil?

‑Uh, haemorrhage and lust.

‑Haemorrhage and lust, and the survey says.

‑Bing!

‑That was answer number eight, with four percent. Judy, think you can top that?

‑I'll try! How about--funicular and tragicomedy?

‑What's the board say about funicular and tragicomedy?

—Bing!

‑Seven percent! Answer five! Okay, let's go to your families now. Dan, what do you think?

‑Virgule and sassafras.

‑Board?

‑Bing!

-Aw, that's six on the board. Over here, to Jessie. Jessie?

‑I think marijuana and seascape.

‑Brah!

‑Not on the board, brush up on your Shakespeare. Now to Ignatz, the family clown. What say ye, Ignatz?

‑Tripartite and eggshell white.

‑Take it again, no phrases allowed!

‑Tripartite and methacrylate.

—Tripartite and methacrylate?

‑Bing!

‑Third, seventeen percent! Still, there's two better answers. Over to Rebecca.

‑I know this. Astigmatic and cavernous.

‑Board?

‑Bing!

‑Number two! And, families, the game is over, since the number one answer has a gross obscenity in it! You're all winners!

 

*

 

Fourteen Weeks Before Judgement Day

 

So, this guy dies, and he winds up at the Gates of Heaven, and there's St. Peter behind a mahogany desk, with an in-box, an out-box, and so on.

Without a greeting, St. Peter says: "I've been going through your files, and, sorry to tell you, you've been rejected."

The guy says: "What? I haven't been a good person?"

"Nope," says St. Peter. "From what I understand, you've had several medical treatments, and that's a big rubber stamp of no."

"What, because I had a bladder infection?"

"It's not the infection that matters; what matters is your reaction to it. You had yourself chemically altered, and thus you're not pure enough for the big guy."

"That's outrageous. Everyone has medical treatments."

"And it's been years since anyone has gotten past me. Them's the breaks."

"C'mon, you can't be serious."

"I am very serious. This ain't Sunday School."

"Can't I appeal this judgement?"

"No appeals. As if you could tell us anything we don't already know all about."

"Look, can I tell you a joke to explain?"

St. Peter, as if knowing what to expect, slowly nods.

The guy says: "Listen, Peter. There was this Pastor in a flood, he's had to evacuate his ground floor. Some other folks in a boat float on by, and they shout out: 'Hey, Pastor, get in our boat. We'll take you to higher ground.' And the Pastor says: 'No, no, the Lord will protect me.' A day later the Pastor's on his roof, and a boat comes by, not the same boat, but still. They call out to him, 'C'mon, Pastor, let's get upstream.' And the Pastor says: 'No, I have faith in my Lord.' Next day, he's at the peak of the roof, and standing. A helicopter comes along, and through a megaphone is heard: 'Pastor! Grab this rope!' The Pastor ignores them, because he's got faith in his Lord. Next day: nothing.

"The Pastor ends up here, I guess, and he's talking to you, St. Peter, and he's saying: 'What happened? I had faith in the Lord, but nothing happened!'

"And St. Peter replies, he says: 'What are you talking about? We sent two boats and a helicopter for you!'"

St. Peter, the real one, not the joke one, rolls his eyes and sighs. "I've heard that joke so many times. It's sophistry. It's just sophistry. Next!"

 

*

 

Apropos of nothing

 

Think back and reflect, audience. How have you harmed others?

I can come up with a couple things about people I've harmed, but HOO BOY can I come up with the receipts of who's harmed me.

First, I harmed a nice girl named Eileen Ledbetter back in maybe 2008. I snubbed her because she didn't respond sensitively enough when I told her, in Simcoe Park, that I was falling apart and had to see a psychiatrist. She was simply smiling, and I hated her smile. I never spoke to her again

.Apparently, when she left the corporation some four months later, she left a vivid 'Fuck You' note which I never saw, though others have. I was such a prick, and I haven't yet been forgiven for it.

I wrote about maybe seeing her on a streetcar some nine months ago. You'll have to look it up.

Love is strange.

***

It's hard to know who we've harmed. People who have yelled at me?

Dennis Dougherty yelled at me because he didn't know where I was. My father yelled at me often, because I was not good.

And, as you know, Dear Diary, that I was mean to Cheryl, whose engagement photo got dug up by Roy Schulze, who may be happy and healthy somewhere in Alberta....

I haven't added that she came back, in a van, with her band of musicians, eight months later, and Mary and me saw her play, upstairs at Lee's Palace, good music, and a couple days later Cheryl and me sat down at a park on Danforth together and we made a spliff of hash and smoked it together ('I got some hash.' 'I got some papers.' 'Let's rock!'). We had a good time there. She had forgiven what a cunt I had been. We parted on good terms, and then Roy found a picture indicating that my love had married, twenty-four years ago, and I know she is happy, and I know she doesn't hate me for the horrible things I said to her in that letter I scrawled to her that Sunday she left Toronto.

I think those are the two women I've most.... Wait, there's another. A house party, this girl thought I was cute on the concrete steps. I spurned her.

But it's Eileen Ledbetter I have to apologize to. Sorry, and you're too pretty for words.

 

*

 

"Can you tell us the name of the guy?"

"I think it was Mohammad. One of his friends said it."

"Not much to go on. Hey, Jones, we got anything on rapists named Mohammad?"

[Offstage: 'Very funny, very funny indeed.']

"So, why did you go up there, to his apartment?"

"I dunno. In this sociology class, breaking barriers. To shed myself of my ethnocentralism, I think that got me there."

"We're cops, and we know crime. We're taking this seriously. Geez, four in the morning. You want some coffee?"

"Something's wrong."

"We'll figure this out."

"No, it's that I'm bleeding."

 

*

 

Stillness

 

Geoff Sinclair, as I've seen him, when we go to the opera, sits incredibly still. He puts his hands on his knees. His eyes move about, but he otherwise doesn't stir. Whether it's Strauss or Janáček or that dullard Mozart, he'll always have his hands placid.

At this Tafelmusik performance a couple weeks ago, with David Smookler, I saw it again. When the singers weren't singing, and were sitting there, doing nothing, they didn't fidget. They sat, as stilly as possible, because they should not want to be distractions.

This all fits into it being Palm Sunday, today, somehow.

 

*

 

C'mon, my beatnik lover chick let's put

Our heads outside of space and time,

Like, baby, out in the place where you

Give me yours and I give you mine.

 

Who's had the worser time, was me, was you?

We're both disgusted at the shit we done.

But not we're caught by messes past our minds;

It's carnival, let's eat our fill and have

 

I'm scaring you? Most days I scare myself.

My pit is madness and combined with ire

I got from being animal itself

Makes my sympathetic for those guys

Whose only legacy is local news.

"He was a quiet guy. No-one knew he could ever do something like this."

 

But I am quiet. Look elsewhere for the fire.

Old and old. When people offhand say:

"I got nothin'," they should toss a coin my way.

 

I met our god the other day, or yesterday,

And face-to-face what did I have for him?

I told a joke to God. He didn't laugh.

He didn't even smile. He glared as if

He knew me for the bug I was, not more.

 

It's 9:45 on a Monday morning.

I have to get working soon.

We'll have something for dinner.

Then TV.

 

*

 

I got nothing to sell. I'm bereft, I'm nothing. All I got to say is about us punks.

We've read things others haven't. We know dirt, and we've done shit you wouldn't believe.

I remember some cop checking me for track marks. I wasn't on junk, but the cop thought I might be. (Makes me think I should have been on junk. I never I guess figured out how to get my hands on horse.)

I got this rage in me, maybe from my father's bloodline, that says, in all situations: Fuck you. I'm the angriest person you'll meet this week. My only love is Mary, and everything else can get the fuck out of my face.

I have to take that back a little, because I have a big love for, let's see if you can see a pattern. I love my sister Joanne. I love my sister-in-law Liz. I love Frank's wife Charlotte. I love Linda Sukloff. I love my friend Tammy. I love my neighbour Margaret. I love my old friend Marlene Warnick. (Above it all, I love my wife Mary.) And I love the girl, copper-coloured hair, I saw on the TTC a whole year ago.

 

*

 

Rettop Yrrah and the Gross Copyright Infringement

 

Rettop Yrrah, of Welder's Row, Newcastle, was going out his business in his workshop when his friend David came by.

"Hail fellow, well met," said Rettop.

David got right down to business. "Rettop, are you aware that a writer has taken your name for use as the main character in a series of children's books?"

Rettop was taken aback. "Not in the least."

"Drop down to the nearest Coles, and ask them for a book about Rettop Yrrah, and you'll see what I mean."

That afternoon, Rettop dropped into his nearest Coles. "Excuse me, do you have children's books featuring a character by the name of Rettop Yrrah?"

"We have three titles in stock. They're very popular." The clerk led him to the section, and there Rettop saw his name on three books, one of which was faced out.

"My God," he muttered. "Can this be mere chance?"

He bought all three, even though one was a bit dinged in a corner.

That night, he read the earliest one. The book had nothing to do with him same for the name of the protagonist.

He said aloud: "It must be just a co-incidence."

 

*

 

DANIEL GARBER: "What are you doing here, at my stream?"

WHITE WOMAN: "I'm putting my stones of trauma into it."

"There are plenty of streams, thousands of them. So why mine?"

"It's Lakota, so it's better than other streams."

"And someone told you all this?"

"Yes, my therapist in Denver, that the Lakota are wise."

"Well, maybe so, but you're still trespassing."

"No way. The land belongs to everyone."

"This part doesn't. You got some chutzpah."

"This ritual won't take long, please."

"You got ten minutes, then vamoose."

"It's for my broken heart."

"You're gonna lecture me about broken hearts?"

 

*

 

"I got all these people around me, who are using, to some extent, AI. Mary has used it, Frank has used it, some other persons have said they've used it. Donna Haraway predicted it back in the 90's. "We have always ever been cyborgs." Since using any tool, such as a hammer, or a bone a la 2001, we have become no-longer-quite-human. So, of course friends and lovers of mine will use AI. They would not be human if they didn't. I don't know if I'm human or not since, to be human, I should be tool-using, but I don't like this tool (AI), which naturally makes me less-than-human in rejecting it."

I was quite wrong. Donna Haraway is epiphenomenal here. We have to go back to Meno, in which this character Socrates proves that mathematics is innate to humanity, which is to say that, maybe, to be human is to be capable of using a tool like math.

I use our machines constantly. There's a swell story in the 1001 Nights about it I could look up for you. It's about a horse running away from us clever men.

I guess I'm finally getting what 'alienation' is all about.

 

*

 

C

 

I lamented, some weeks ago, with an inappropriate amount of nostalgia, perhaps, about C., so much so that DG almost chastised me. I figured she had ruined herself through excesses, of drink or drugs, and was no more. Meanwhile, RS, having nothing better to do, searched Alberta newspapers and found a wedding announcement, from 2000, with a nice picture of C and her betrothed. Thus, she found a good man and got married, and she is probably a mother, or perhaps even a grandmother, by now.

At about two in the morning I got awake, and I got to thinking about it all. Facts are facts, even though we want better than them. There are levels below us and above us. Below us, there's the facts of molecules and biology and even molecular biology, while above us, above our consciousness, there's this stuff you can call destiny or fate or chance. We crawl along that razor's edge our entire lives, guided by both those forces that are out of our control, between the land and the sky we live, subject to these powers we don't understand but want to understand, through both science and theology.

Both C and I can say: "Oh, it just didn't work out."

(C's point of view could very well be: "I barely remember the guy. We went to bars and we got drunk. He had read stuff, and I was lost, and he knew stuff. Sure, I kissed him once, but that was only because he wanted to be kissed.")

C went back home, to Alberta, to escape the madness of Toronto, and maybe me myself, as an exemplar, to dry out, try to be no phony, and only once later, with her band, called 'The Quitters', came into Toronto did I see her.

(This is becoming a 'long read', because in the interim between when she left and when we met again, she called me at the bookstore, said she was terribly unhappy, that everything was a mess for her in Edmonton, and she begged me (perhaps she was drunk) to please come to her. I jumped up, told MW and CV I had to go to Alberta immediately, and then, after about an hour, I gained control of my senses. Impractical and pointless [as you'll see below]. Four or five hours later, I called her, and we both agreed it was monkeyshines.)

She came into Toronto on some kind of a van, and I went with M to see her and her band at Lee's Palace. They were pretty good.

Three days later, C and me got together on the east Danforth. There's a little park out there. She said: "I got some hash." I said: "I got some papers." "Perfect!" she said.

I never saw her again after that night, never talked to her again.

Which returns to our original thesis. She was incredibly pretty, and I suppose I was okay-looking too. Why didn't we? Somewhere, above or below, dictated we couldn't. Below-speaking, it was because we were intimate like brother-and-sister, and it would have been incestuous. Above-speaking, we would and wanted to be in a New York play in which a man and a woman tear each other to shreds nastily, for years and years.

Above and below, it would have been evil.

Thanks to RS who found the clipping that showed me that C probably turned out okay.

(To C: Vanity, vanity, as we often said to one another: it was our touchstone. I'm letting go of you now. I've loved you so deeply, it's hard to say. Goodbye.)

 

*

 

To Absent Friends

 

One. After seeing the magnificent film Primate, which was magnificent in that it did what every good show should, D, on a napkin, tried to show me his theory of music. Since he's a jazz player and not a classical player--he can't even read a chart--as he's making more and more esoteric cumbrances on his napkin I had to say, like everyone has to eventually say to anyone who is partly sane: "I don't get this. I know how music works, but jazz, I don't get."

Two. The town blocked of a whole road downtown even though the road was a dead-end street and thus used mostly for parking. All the cars lining that dead-end streets were the cars of rich bureaucrat people.

Three. I was talking to the Dalai Lama the other day, and he asked me: "Could you help me? I've been trying to understand for so long the relationship you make between internality and externality. Do you have a metaphor or some such for me to understand?"

I held up my left hand. "This is what internality looks like."

Then I held up my right hand. "This is what externality looks like."

 

*

 

Spring

 

Finally, the snow is gone. I thought it would never leave. The earth tilts on its axis, making this planet inhabitable. If not for that, there wouldn't be a rocketship flying on back to us.

Aside from that, we would have missed out on a lot more. We wouldn't have spelling and pedantry, for example. There wouldn't be the lark or the nightingale. What about the big things, aside from rocketships? No ocean liners, and, I dare say, no oceans at all. (I'm probably wrong about that one, but what the hell.)

There would have been no words, no poetry, not even sha-la-la. Nothing would be everywhere, because we wouldn't be around to know any thing.

And what about desert island disks? Since, perhaps, there would be any oceans, there wouldn't be any islands. And what about disks, they wouldn't be anywhere available either. No record stores, no bookshops, I'm very grateful the planet is tilted.

Nothing but an emptiness no-one would know anything about. A trillion miles away, they might see Sol, but not this third planet. Who would want to go there? A dead planet, without even an interesting café? I love the tilt and what it's created.

 

*

 

One of the tales in the 1001 nights

 

goes something like this. (I haven't read in five years or so, and thus it is incomplete.)

One day, a long time ago, a monkey was wandering through the forest when he heard a great commotion, and it was decidedly heading his way. Through the jungle came a stampede of all the animals of the forest, and they passed by the monkey, not stopping a bit. The monkey jumped onto a horse's back, and as they went along, the monkey managed to yell:

"What's going on? Is there a great fire back there?"

"No, it's not a fire. It's something worse."

"What, then? A volcano, an earthquake?"

"Those are nothing compared to what we're fleeing."

"C'mon, what is it?"

"It's a new creature of the forest. It is called 'Man'."

"Wow, he must be of a terrifying stature. How big is this 'Man'?"

"He's about a third of my size."

"That's it? And you're fleeing like mad?"

"Oh, but you don't get it. This 'Man' is very very smart. He's going to dominate us forever if we don't run away."

So the monkey and the horse fled together this horrible being 'Man'.

 

 

---

[1] This will be fun (sarc)

[2] Speak for yourself, buddy

[3] A definition would help here

[4] You're gonna get spell-checked, buddy

[5] Coming from someone who freaks out being touched, this is rich

[6] Clever, leaving this open for other senses

[7] Which is where? Outside body, or outside mind?

[8] See above

[9] I have to agree with you on that

[10] You're disproving yourself

[11] That word again

[12] Black water this

[13] In what way?

[14] They were from Oshawa

[15] They never denied this, for publicity purposes

[16] This one stunned you more than the others

[17] You know where it is. You know what it is. You know it all.