Starmen

This year we lost our wonderful friend Mike. And our talented pal Tom just two years before that. I often think about the fun times we had in grad school with the one, and in our fledgling adult lives with the other. For some reason, this cautionary tale on the precious impermanence of life and joy always leads me to David Bowie. At one particular-spectacular moment in time Mike, Tom, my parents, my first dog, Prince AND Bowie were all living their lives. A sort of Kuiack-Purvis-Laurette-Gerard-Brillo-Prince-Bowie Confluence. They were all alive. Like me. And most of them were happy.

Inspired by Dying. Photo by Mary Ellen Kelm.

Postcards From the Pandemic

Tourism in the pandemic leaves much to be desired. Forget flights or trains. All destinations are local. There is much to witness from your window or balcony. Birdsong. The moon. A cloud. Maple blossoms (which you’ve never noticed before) are striking. Sunset is must-see.
     Venturing further afield, find somewhere you can walk without breaking the two metre protocol. Forget dining out. If there is any good in this, it’s that you can’t stage a food-porn photo of your restaurant meal. The new normal is you, all alone, sightseeing in your mask. Post that to social media and wait for Likes.

Home Delivery in the Time of Cholera

Towards the end of my career with the Toronto Star, and with a young entrepreneur’s eye to scoring a few more tips from that year’s final collection, a fifteen-year-old me bought a bunch of Christmas stickers to stick on my copies of the Saturday paper.
     Okay, so that didn’t work.
     But I’ve learned a lot in the last four decades, and since they have yet to come up with festive pandemic stickers, I decided to create some myself for my current route, not for the money this time, just for something to let folks know I was thinking of them.

Pandemic Togetherness

There are no clubs or cozy cafés, no pints on tap, no films downtown, so at exactly 7:30 we stand on the sidewalk, appropriately distanced of course, and launch into cacophonous tribute with our pots and pans as a between-calls ambulance cruises slowly past and replies with a siren WHOOP and lights, and we bang our cookware harder, hearts bursting, who doesn’t love a parade, grinning like idiots and telling the kids, you’ll remember this—then we all peaceably disperse, thankful for our responders and our fellow citizens and the relative sanity of our politicians, and knowing we are #StrongerTogether.

Photo by Ron Thompson, April 2020

One Adult, Please.

Please tell me there’s a decent action-adventure playing downtown tonight, without a stupid romance crammed in, because that’s really the movie I’d like to see . . . alone this time; or even a drama, where the first girl to get the obvious close-up doesn’t automatically go on to become the love interest; or one where so much is happening in the hero’s life that he doesn’t even need a girlfriend; because, you know what, most of us never do get to meet our obvious girl, or worse, the one you thought was your obvious girl doesn’t find you the least bit appealing.

Image from The Summer of ’42, obviously.

Olive’s Centennial

Olive Oyl first appeared in the cartoon strip Thimble Theatre on December 19, 1919. For a decade Olive was the strip’s main character. Her boyfriend was Harold Hamgravy, a no-good lay-about and philanderer. When they finally fell out, Olive’s affections settled on Popeye, who became so popular that Thimble Theatre was renamed for him. The Sailor Man always had a schtick. Initially he rubbed the head of the Whiffle Hen for luck; later he obtained superhuman strength from eating spinach straight from the can.
     Today, we know that spinach is best sautéed in butter or olive oil. Happy Birthday, Olive.

Inspired by Butter Brawl and Olive Oyl's birthday. Image: Popeye.Fandom.com

Butter Brawl

A friend once told me that the way to stop the butter from burning in your frying pan is to add just a bit of oil.
     And it was an excellent piece of advice, too, except that I had this huge falling out with the guy—more than 32 years ago now—and still would be very happy if I never saw, or even thought of the fucker ever again, except that I do, every single time I add just a bit of oil to the butter in my frying pan . . . and I do eat an awful lot of eggs.

Photo found in Miz Gee's Kitchen.

Patterns of Force

A 100-word story shouldn’t require a 100-word introduction, but here goes…
     Recently, Ron wondered why we’re not writing here more about Trump, and I think a good part of the reason is that it’s simply too hard to keep up. This came to me a week or so after the inauguration when the first batch of Nazi stuff came out, and those stories of an addled president wandering the halls of the White House. With that, I started work on this bit of comedy gold, but by the time I’d finished futzing with it, everyone had already moved on. 
     Enjoy . . .

Remember the one where that “really smart guy” convinced himself the Nazis actually had some good ideas and so introduces them to one faction of a divided and unbalanced planetary system, in an attempt to remodel their world on what he calls the “most efficient society ever created,” except that the thugs who support him end up focussing on the bad Nazi stuff, persecuting outsiders, consolidating their power, and propping up the “stable genius” as a rambling, angry, and perpetually doped-up figurehead.
     Well, it seems those people who missed that episode of Star Trek are now condemned to repeat it.

A time for semantics (part 2)

“Van attack” has a “short sharp shock” metre going for it, but, for assonance, “van rampage” – the name the Toronto Star and Huffington Post are pushing – is hard to beat. And it has a spirit of something more extraordinary, of old made new, beast made man, of erratic movement and duration, of predictable unpredictability.
     “1715, in Scottish, probably from Middle English verb ramp ‘rave, rush wildly about’ (c. 1300), especially of beasts rearing on their hind legs, as if climbing, from Old French ramper (see ramp (n.1), also see rampant).”
     Yeah, on this one, that’s all I got.

A time for semantics (part 1)

Some earlier mass killings-by-vehicle, e.g., “the Berlin Christmas Market attack” or “the London Bridge attack” are named for more specific places. This one, on our “longest street in the world,” makes “Yonge Street van attack” unworkable.
     But is calling this “the Toronto van attack” (CNN, The Guardian, Globe & Mail, National Post) a done deal? How events get their names is the question of Peter Eglin, who traces how a 1989 event initially called terrorism, tragedy, and disaster, became “the Montreal Massacre.” Holocaust, Shoah, Final Solution: names encapsulate our views of cause, effect, rightness, wrongness, extraordinariness, ownership, and appropriate redress.

In a Surreal World

Is Exquisite Corpse dead or merely moribund?
     The Corpse’s last post was made in November, 2016. Since then, Donald Trump has become U.S. President and Ford Nation has returned to life. In the Corpse’s absence, Britain is careening towards Brexit, ice caps are melting, hurricanes and blizzards are rampant, gunmen are rampaging, plastic particles are clogging the sea and our drinking water. By my count there have been five new Marvel Universe films released since the Corpse’s last breath. Can you dismiss any of this as coincidence? What kind of Bizarro World is this? (Disclosure: I’ve always preferred DC myself.)

Cartoon drawn by Jake Tapper of CNN.

Another Cent-less Loss

On February 4, 2013, in a typically arbitrary and mean cost-cutting move, Steven Harper’s Conservative government withdrew the Canadian penny from circulation. From that day forward, cash transactions were to be rounded to the nearest nickel.
     That summer, August 10th to be precise, I purchased a bag of ice from the general store at Wymbolwood Beach for $2.99, forked over my three dollars, and with some fanfare was presented with what would be the very last penny I would ever receive in change.
     And to honour that one-cent worth of rebellion, I have carried it in my pocket ever since.

Then, on the morning of November 8, 2016, when I was changing into short pants for a chiropractic appointment—swapping my wallet, my keys, and the coins from the pockets of my long pants—I realized I had lost the last Canadian penny I’d ever received in change. I had never considered it my lucky penny, just an important penny, and a comfortable little ritual in trying times.
     It was not on the floor of my bedroom, it was not in the little basket Dr. Eric keeps for the stuff that falls from people’s pockets as they lie on his table.

Really, I had never considered it lucky, and after three-plus years in the left-hand pocket of my many pants, I have to admit it was looking pretty grotty. Lots of pretty good things had happened to me in all the time I’d been carrying it, but lots of shitty stuff, too. And honestly, I was already getting my head around the loss of the silly thing, when a Tuesday that had already started out badly ended with the election of Donald J. Trump.
     Then, as if I needed any more proof, I found it again on Wednesday.
     Sorry, America.

The Typeface Families, part iii

Arial Baskerville wished she’d never signed up for speed dating. The first man to read her nametag asked if her parents liked Shakespeare. Arial, who generally felt more muffin toppy than spritely, tried not to cry. The second man asked if her parents liked The Little Mermaid. No, said Arial, wondering if it was his hair gel that gave him a kind of pedophile vibe. The third asked if her parents had been in the mile-high club. At that, Arial bolted, crashing into a rumpled but nice-looking man who’d evidently had the same idea. His name tag read Gill Sans.

The Typeface Families, part ii

Baskerville has a thick old face, and his whole Roman-nosed clan seems stolid and button-down. A bit constipated. They bring to mind a mantel clock ticking off another dull Sunday with only tea to look forward to, and that at the stroke of six, not a moment before. Easy to read, you think at first; but their reticence seduces, and over time their true nature manifests. They are in fact not obese and dull but round and voluptuous. Their crisp seraphic hauteur belies a bawdy sensibility and a hearty appetite. These characters revel in a good swash and well-turned loop.

Image: Astrid Hampton

The Typeface Families, part i

The Morisons lived as if in times that were Roman – yet new. Stanley Morison embraced a Mediterranean fusion diet. His signature dish: a straight-up egg linguine drenched in olive oil from a bottle with girls in togas, and that would’ve been fine. But then he’d spray on this Thai fish sauce, an update, he said, of an ancient fermented fish recipe. Actually it wasn’t bad. But no one visited the Morisons a second time, not just because of Stanley’s rotting fish gut disquisition, but also because of the spray of serifs he’d leave hanging in the air as he talked.

Bobblehead Ernie and the Pennant Race

The Blue Jays’ recent swoon coincides with a serious injury to my bobblehead Ernie Whitt, suffered in the course of an overzealous cleaning. (No blame shall be cast, at least out loud.)
      I’m not particularly superstitious when it comes to sports; sure, I lace my left skate up first, etc; but something about this was deeply unsettling. Coincidence? Bah. In a pennant race, it’s all hands, past and present, on deck.
      Catchers’ legs are notoriously fragile, but a few dabs of Goop and several hours in traction fixed Ernie up. He’s back. He’s swinging.
      Now over to you, current Jays.

Pane E Sciroppo di mais

Few images have stayed in my mind as indelibly as a scene from Franco Brusati’s Pane E Cioccolata. Here a group of illegal migrant workers living in a chicken coup spy on some Swiss skinny-dipping youth. They watch from their hovel, their faces covered in shit and pin feathers, enraptured by this vision of white pulchritude splashing about all flesh and sunshine and lazy dust motes. Nino feels the alienation most strongly and in an attempt at inclusion bleaches his hair. Eventually, he betrays himself when he roots for Italy during a football game.
     Outed.
     Like me at Holt Renfrew.

Image from F. Brusati’s Pane E Cioccolata (1974)

Gold Star

It’s well-established I'm shallow but “Gold Star?” Seriously? Gotta wonder what were the other contenders for this label?
     My Trump Schadenglee is wrecked by seeing it takes a dead son to trump Trump, and now on CNN dude in lecture mode about radical Islam is trying to trump the dead son’s Gold Star dad—“the threat, sir, is not from Swedish Lutherans named Anna and Lars.” So, where does this end? With people whose dead son got killed by heinous Swedish Lutherans named Anna and Lars to trump the Trump-trumper’s trumper? (In Swedish, yo, “Gold Star” is “Guldstjärna.”)

Image: www.zazzle.ca

Pasta al packer

The rest of the spaghetti noodles
Half a Belgian endive
The rest of the crumbly low-fat goat cheese, maybe it’s crumbly b/c it sat out two hours during the packing of the glasses but whatevs, heat’ll kill shit
2 dried chili peppers
Walnut oil

Cook noodles. Heat oil in pan, throw in chopped endive. Clean fridge drawer. Remember endive. Stir. Dump in noodles. Add crumbled chili peppers, crumbly goat cheese. Wash Royal Doulton bunny bowl. Dry with same somewhat Windexy teatowel just used to wipe fridge drawer, oh well, price of civilization. Dump into bowl. Photograph. Blog. (Civilization.) Eat. Civilization.

A Letter to my Future Self

That two-pound tub of tahini you just purchased won’t expire till 2019, so there’s every chance you’ll forget where you finally did find it in Peter’s No Frills.
     It’s not, as you might expect, in the “foreign-food” section. It’s not with the fancy nut-based spreads . . . or even shelved with the cheaper, old-school peanut butters.
     Because, apparently, Peter considers plain, ground sesame paste a sauce, and so has filed it under “T”—I presume—one shelf below the Tabasco, along with the rest of the dressings and marinades.
     And, hopefully, he won’t move it again before the end of the decade.

The Last Days of Mon Patou, Part III

I finally got my answer to how Riley's dog was faring among the trampling cows at his new home. Turned out, he’d never reached it. While Riley was still on her own, she’d gotten new chicks for her chicken house. Mon Patou had guarded the chickens stoutly, but something about those chicks -- perhaps their squeakiness -- set him off. He’d chewed through the lot of them, leaving the yard littered with wistful feathers. Riley went on Craigslist, and that same night, Mon Patou was taken away. A man came from Halifax, bringing a satin cushion for Mon Patou’s ride.

The Last Days of Mon Patou, Part II

Riley was writing happy emails about moving in with her beau. But she never answered when I asked how her dog, Mon Patou, was doing. I tried to imagine a happy story for him. But the new home had cows, and I couldn’t imagine Mon Patou, with his dodgy hips, managing a barn's worth of cows instead of three goats, one sheep, and a chicken house. It would kill him to be a failure. I imagined him trampled by cows, made a fool of by that wild-eyed sheep, depressed, not eating, and finally put to a querulous sleep.

The Last Days of Mon Patou, Part I

I adored Mon Patou. We’d taken to each other instantly, lunging and feinting as we played in the new snow. He’d used to work with a whole herd of sheep, but the hip trouble that made him bunnyhop through the snow put an end to his farm days. My friend Riley took him in. She brushed the mats out of his hair and gave him a manageable fiefdom: three goats, one sheep, and a chicken house. When someone walked down the road, Mon Patou would bark his head off; when the sheep went for his food, he’d snap her away.

Your report on the subway

I saw your report on the subway. The one from the SickKids Neuroscopy Department. You’re sitting sleepy in your parka, between a man and a woman with hair dyed the same brown as her purse. Your report has three pages. No, the man turns to a fourth; the woman’s purse strap is laced through a gold chain. The man draws his finger down a column of numbers. Maybe the words beside them are the same width as the word “normal”? The woman looks too, quickly, pursing her lips differently. You all get off at Glencairn. I really hope you’re okay.

What We Remember Depends

Nola’s kindergarten class made felt poppies on Friday to teach them about Remembrance Day, and to wear to the concert put on by the older kids.
     I don’t know what she knows about war and sacrifice, but she was so proud of the thing she insisted on wearing it to dance class on Saturday, which really was Remembrance Day, and so did a whole lot more than her father did, perhaps because he thinks too much about the foolish wars we’re fighting now.
      “What are we supposed to remember on Remembrance Day?” I asked her.
      “Remember to wear our poppies!”

Image based on a post by SheKnows.

Men of Tin, Take Pity

In fields of Oz the poppies blew, succumbing the blood of beast and man to luscious slumber. Dorothy slept, and Toto too, and their burly lion companion. The poppies’ charms could be resisted only by men of tin and straw. They rescued Dorothy, and Toto too, but it seemed they’d have to break faith with their burly friend. Yet... the lion was rescued nonetheless. Taking pity on a fieldmouse that was fleeing a wildcat, the man of tin chopped off the wildcat’s head. The grateful fieldmouse, revealed to be a queen, rallied her subjects to lug friend lion to sanctuary

Image: Jane Long.
For other posts inspired by this image, see Magpie Tales.

More Reasons to Throw Them Out

Won’t meet with premiers. Won’t meet with chiefs. Stifle dissent, vilify opponents, exploit anxiety. Leave a vacuum then excoriate those filling it. Little ideas, petty moves, lists of enemy stakeholders.
     Control freaks. Parliament prorogued. The destruction of science records. “Canada’s Economic Action Plan” splashed everywhere, 24 Seven on YouTube. The CBC’s death by a thousand cuts. False dichotomies: “You’re either with us or you’re with the child pornographers.” “No brainers.” An all-powerful PMO. Royal Canadian Anything. Mandatory minimums. On message, right or wrong. Paul Calendra and Dean del Mastro. A seventy-eight day election campaign, longest in 143 years. Pierre Poilievre.

(Note: This is Part 2 of a summary that began 10 days into this interminable campaign. For the original, adorned by @cartogeek's fantastic Mother Canada in the Tar Sands, click here.)

Image: Bruce MacKinnon, The Chronical Herald.

Bobby Martin IX: Guacamole

Mrs. Terplitsky brought over guacamole this time. Cally wondered how to eat guacamole when Theo had died, alone and upset. He’d been worried about some little boy who’d come in for his first session. But why? She should’ve paid more attention. Should’ve woken up. Should’ve helped him.
      Mrs. Terplitsky’s poodle, Pickford, whined in the doorstep and Cally remembered. That boy had a neighbour whose Lab had keeled over in High Park. Suddenly, Cally was determined to find the boy. To understand why his story had sent her husband to his demise.
     “Could I take Pickford to the park?” she asked.

Bobby Martin VIII: Peaceful

“Bears attack rapidly, Mrs. W-w-webb,” said the coroner. “Your husband w-w-would've died almost immediately, p-p-peacefully even.”
     “He was not peaceful!” Cally Webb yelled. She wasn’t a yeller by nature, but she found it satisfying. She’d have to tell Theo when she got home, she thought, and then realized again that he was dead. Her face crumpled.
     The coroner winced. “P-p-please,” he said.
     “He couldn’t have been peaceful,” Cally muttered, “his socks didn’t match.”
     “What?” said the coroner, surprisingly easily.
     “His socks. Didn’t match. Theo never wore socks that didn’t match. Something must've worried him that morning. And now he’s dead.”

Bobby Martin VII: The demise of Dr. Webb

Lugging his bags up the steps, Theo failed to notice that no boat was docked next door. Then the clatter coming from Cy and Deb’s turned into an almighty crash. Dropping everything, Theo scrambled through the brush, and banged open their door. Why was it splintered? “Cy! Deb!” The front room was trashed. He barrelled into the kitchen only to be stopped by his fleshless reflection in the picture window. Despite the noonday sun, his teeth chattered as the startled bear fell on him. Did it swim from the mainland? He thought, and then as he died, Poor, poor Bobby.

Bobby Martin VI: Comforter

Cally Webb snuggled into the comforter, eking out her perfect dream. She was in a chalet. With Theo, who actually had taken a vacation. There was a fireplace, and Merlot, and toast, why not lots of toast, cinnamon toast with lots of butter, and she was telling Theo, “You’ve got butter on your nose,” and leaning in, laughing, to lick it off, when he clamped his hand, suddenly icy, on her shoulder. The chalet windows shuddered and broke. A cold, ashy wind blew the fire out and Cally awoke, panicked and kicking. “Theo?” she said. “Theo?”
     But he wasn't there.

Image: mariaemb.

Bobby Martin V

Theo rose early, scribbled a note to Cally, then drove north. The cottage on Fire Box Island had been in the Webb family since his grandfather bought the land from the Crown in 1922. After his meeting with the boy and his terrifying early-morning imaginings he had to come up to sort himself out. It was nearly noon when his tiny boat sputtered across the bay and glided to the dock. The distant clatter of dishes told him that Deb and Cy, his only neighbours, were preparing their lunch and he was momentarily comforted by such a pleasant, mundane thought.

Photo by Yvonne Boothroyd, YJB Images.

Patriot of a nation

Consider me a patriot of the nation of Procrastination. Crastinum is Latin for tomorrow (cras) + a time-related suffix (tinus). It once was possible to call the day after a holiday, or a term, or whatever, its “crastin” or “crostino”. The national custom is to eat cranberry crostini on the crastino of Christmas. You see we are a fine little nation, where first we do no harm. We grant asylum gladly to all seekers, waiving tiresome paperwork gently, like an old breeze. Our citizenship test is easy. Every day you can pass if you just say, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Image: NeighborFood

Bobby Martin IV

Dr. Webb woke at 2 am chilled. His wife had taken all the blankets again. He had dreamed of skulls seen through the flesh — a row of faces, their mouths open in silent screams. Even after 20 years in practice, he couldn’t stop bringing his work home. He sighed, thinking about Bobby. Schizophrenia in someone so young was rare. He turned to the bundle beside him. “Cally, stop hogging.” He yanked on the comforter, and when she didn’t respond, shook her. That’s when he saw — in the glow of the streetlight outside the window — his skeleton hand on her shoulder.

Viagra for Women

The FDA has approved a drug said to enhance female sex drive by activating sexual impulses in the brain.
   Addyi (generic: flibanserin), which is similar to a class of drugs that includes Prozac and other antidepressants, was previously rejected for its lack of effectiveness and adverse side effects (nausea, dizziness, and fainting).
   The drug will be available mid-October.
   Coincidentally, my novel A Person of Letters (generic: APOL) will also debut in October. APOL also affects chemical levels in the brain, notably endorphins, leading to feelings of pleasure and euphoria, without any of the unpleasant complications of its more expensive competitor.

Addyi image: Sprout Pharmaceuticals, reproduced by Reuters. APOL image: the author.

Bobby Martin, part III

“The FBI? Like a Special Agent!” The doctor smiled at Bobby. ”So, you see words? Words that tell you things?”
     Bobby stared out at College Street, slick and grey, the traffic light at Bathurst spattering red across the wet window. “No, just skeletons, and then things die.”
     Eleanor worried her pursestraps, then played at taking notes.
     People outside avoided puddles, ran for the streetcar. Bobby watched. No dead people.
     “So, how do you feel when you see these . . . ” Dr. Webb hesitated slightly, “these skeletons?”
     The boy moved his gaze from the window to the man.
     “I feel cold.”


Photo copyright by Corbis Images.

Why the Conservatives Must Go, in 100 Words

Ideology over analysis. Dinosaur of the day. Newspeak about “democratic reform.” A useless census. Voter suppression. Contempt of parliament. In and out. Impugning the Supreme Court. Killing the Kelowna Accord. Mother Canada. The sanctimonious international soap box. Unprincipled cynicism. Liberty curtailed. Monument to the Victims of Communism. The integrity deficit. Israel right or wrong. The muzzling of scientists. Mike Duffy. Hush money. Cold Camembert with broken crackers. Permanent campaigning. Patrick Brazeau. Tax pandering. Throw away the key. Dirty tricks and smear campaigns. Secrecy. Attack dogs. Scripted answers. Waving the flag, extolling the fight, and screwing the warrior. Robocalls. Pierre Poilievre.

Mother Canada in the Tar Sands by @cartogeek.

For a further 100 words on this subject, click here.

Bobby Martin II: I See You

“Please don’t think I’m crazy,” Bobby’s mother said to the doctor. She knew she had a crazy story to tell and now she looked crazy too. Her hair was stuck to her face in rain-soaked tangles and, when she tried to give Bobby a tissue, all she had in her pocket was a sodden wad.
      The doctor reached for his tissue box. He’s kind, Bobby’s mother thought, and he has polka dot socks.
      “Tell me what’s happening,” he said.
      Bobby stirred. “I see you phoning someone,” he said to the doctor. “Someone called Cyril. From the FIB. I mean, FBI.”

This story began here.

Image: StockPhotos.Ro

Robert Martin’s Hamster and Other Dead Things

It started with his hamster. Bobby barely spoke, “Mummy, why can I see Hammy’s bones?”
     Robert Martin’s mother approached the cage to find the animal playing happily on his wheel.
     “His head…I just see his skull, no fur, no eyes, nothing.”
     Eleanor forgot about the exchange until Hammy turned up stiff and cold under a blanket of shavings a day later.

     It continued.

Bobby’s visions extended to strangers on the street, actors on television, and lately the neighbour’s Labrador. They were lucky to get that doctor’s appointment and barely ascended the streetcar before the sky turned black and it poured.


A graveyard in Murcott, England. Photo by L. Leclair.

This story continues here.
 

Leaps of faith

At 51 I leapt. The occasion was the first washing of a new dress, a first-day-of-classes dress, a dress whose iron gray midweight cotton weave would announce “I’m dead serious” but whose polka dots and neck bow would say “this could be fun.” Hope against hope, the bow came fucking undone in the wash. Enter this diagram. Step 5 was where I leapt, the step at which what’s depicted as an inviting loop really has become a hanging sweat-creased string. (Yeah, you try it). But if you believe it’s a loop, bingo, you get a bow. Next step, finding Jesus.

Image: Frills, Fluff and Trucks.

Looking for the new moon

The east side of the park is lit by the hard white
glare on the tennis courts, neon balls smashing
past, and through the bushes that mask the semi-
rich people’s houses, light glints off their swimming
pool and Mick Jagger pounds on about how this
lady said she’d cover him in roses.

On the west side of the park the air is soft
with smudges of a contemplative joint. The
watery emeralds of the distant tower lights
turn meekly pink, the only flickering star
might be a firefly. I’d come out looking
for the newborn moon. Hush, no, not yet.

Turquoise Bowl

A comfort food of my childhood was rice with cheese. The rice used to be, well, rice. Today it’s Freekeh, a pretentiously-roasted green wheat – I read the package – with rosemary thrown in. The cheese used to be Samso, an über-bland Danish cheese even plainer than mozzarella. Today it’s a 3-year old cheddar, the kind that disturbed my father. “Can’t you finish it before you go back to Toronto,” he’d fret, “it makes a mess, it’s so crumbly.” But the grater I’m using was once my mother’s, and I’m still eating from the same stripey bowl as when I was six.

Purple Prose

Purple was her favourite colour — a sophisticated mix of cool and warm shades, she explained to the unrefined — the colour of royalty. Behr’s Mulberry vibrated on her living room walls. In fact, she filled her house with purple: indigo, lavender, lilac, mauve, plum and lots and lots of wine. Everywhere you looked: an extravaganza of purple — hard on the eyes like purple prose on the ears. Perhaps, we mused, she’s trying to match the three-day bruises on her arms. Perhaps we should have said something  — reported him. They buried her in a long-sleeved dress the colour of puce.

Purple Like Me

Not long after Rob Ford was elected mayor, my first small act of protest was to buy a Bike-Riding Pinko button from the bookstore up the street. When Olivia Chow ran against him four years later, our ward was one of only three to give Toronto a bright spot of purple among a sea of disappointment. Which was no surprise, really, since we’d been voting NDP provincially and federally long before the Orange Crush of 2011. Oh, and the leader of Ontario’s Green Party lives right around the corner. So yeah, I guess you could say it’s a colourful neighbourhood.

Map by blogTO. Glass by GraphicsFuel.

Something Old, Something Blue

Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau today stepped aside in favour of former leader Jean Chretien. The move follows the return of Gilles Duceppe to lead the Bloc Quebecois after polls showed voter ambivalence towards Whateverhisnamewuz. Mr. Chretien did not comment on his campaign platform or what he hopes to accomplish if elected. “I just want to kick some ass,” he told reporters before wrestling a separatist to the ground.
     In other news, Chumbawamba launched its much-anticipated summer tour, the Colorado Avalanche announced the club’s return to Quebec City, and Microsoft announced it was re-rebooting its popular operating system, Windows 95.

Image: CBC

The Rime of the Ancient Hipster

So Kathy and I saw that lammy peacock on a rooftop just next to the bank. Was its presence here a feathered talisman for our neighbourhood? A haut-gammed albatross guiding us along our daily routines of foraging for organic asparagus and cheese made from Quebecois ungulates? And what would have happened if someone, say from Newmarket, saw it and shot it dead? Would he wear it around his neck too? Would our luck have turned? Would we have our very survival tested by devalued semis and unilingual children? Would my skinny brown hand never again hoist an ironic craft beer?

Photo by Hazel Smith.

The Woman in Gold

After seeing “The Kiss” last year in Vienna I went on a crash course on artist Gustav Klimt. So I was excited last month to see his sumptuous “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” at an exhibit at the Neue Galerie timed to coincide with the opening of a film about the portrait’s history. The painting was renamed “The Woman in Gold” by the Nazis when they confiscated it from its Jewish owners. Why? Adele Bloch-Bauer was Jewish. The Nazis had a rapacious eye for art, and they could well recognize beauty, but they could not acknowledge it in a Jew.

Image: Neue Galerie, New York

50 Ways To Leave Your Dentist

Carol was cool, a woman dentist when there were no women dentists, and her boyfriend-receptionist was a tattooed biker with silver rings. But Carol got this new hygienist, a former oral surgeon from a former Soviet Republic, who cleaned my teeth with violent efficiency, as though I were out cold. Blood streamed down my cheek and that was that.
     Then I found Joel. He was an empath, flinching whenever I’d flinch, yet I liked him and his thin, tired eyes. Six months later, when I came back, he was gone. Joel quit, they said. I always felt he’d committed suicide.

Decalcification

My dentist was concerned about a couple of brown spots he’d found on my lower-left canine. Decalcification, he called it and planned on touching them up with a bit of bonding material. No freezing necessary.
     To his surprise, though, they turned out to be cavities. He was preparing the surface, he told me, “and the drill just sunk right in.”
     And for all of the horror I’ve seen in the spit bowl, I think it disturbed me more right then to hear my tooth decay discussed as casually as I might describe the wood rotting away on my front porch.

Image by Linda Wilson.

4 out of 5 Dentists

It’s a proven fact that the gallons of fluoridated water that ran through our taps helped mitigate the tooth-rotting effects of childhood Tang drinking. But while Gen Xers reared on Cap’n Crunch and Pop Tarts may have been spared a mouthful of cavities, they now must endure the semi-annual harangue for cosmetic enhancements proffered by dentists who no longer earn their keep from fillings and extractions. My tooth doctor's pushing a $3000 porcelain overlay on a wonky molar. She keeps composites in a repurposed Ferragamo scarf box. These she shows me so that I can understand how the procedure works.

Photo by Oleksandr Bedenyuk.