A Choice of Sorts

It was one of their first dinner dates. He inhaled a piece of bruschetta and looked at her with teeth baring; a Herculean-like smile. She envisioned Mr. Clean with the corners of his mouth making sparkly dinging sounds in her head. It worked.

     Then Basil showed up. Unannounced.

He settled in for the evening getting comfortable in between the incisors. She tried not to look but Basil drew her in. Simultaneously repulsing and transfixing her with his emerald charm. She rushed through dinner planning the inevitable break-up. Later home alone, drinking a Smirnoff ice, she decided she could love Basil too.

Inspired by Hydra. Image by Walt Disney Pictures by way of People Magazine.

Hydra

They caught up with Hercules at the arcade downtown, holding court and pumping quarters into an old Hydra machine.

     “The girls down here are driving me nuts,” he boasted. “You try and tell them you’re just looking for a bit of fun, but then things start to get a bit serious—which is also okay—but then some stupid little problem crops up, and then another, and then it’s all with the stupid fights.”

     “So, then,” asked Corvus, “what do you do?”

     “You've gotta just cut them off,” said Hercules. “Burn ’em and leave, before they make their problems yours.”

Inspired by The Twelve Labours of Sophie. Animation by Justin Cyr.

The Twelve Labours of Sophie

My neighbour and I have an agreement: I promise to never, ever let my dogs near her lawn. She, in turn, will keep me abreast of her daily pains: her back, her legs, her neighbours, litterbugs, animals. What past murderous deed warranted such trials?

Our relationship stayed the same for years. Until we met on Fern Avenue last Sunday morning. We were both heading to Roncesvalles. Sophie’s walker pell-melling it to St. Casimir and keeping pace with Nim’s sniff-and-stroll. All was fine until Misko let forth with a Cerberus-worthy turd. Hardly a golden apple, but enough to make her suffer.

Inspired by In Gods They Trust. Image found on Pinterest (uncredited) with edits by the author and Roy Schulze.

In gods they trust

Zeus stepped out onto the balcony, leaving Europa asleep, tangled in the sheets. He relished nights on Olympus, the cool air, the stars overhead, and the quiet, broken only by the raucous noise of mortals far below. Such foolish, trusting creatures, believing their times of plenty would never end! And they wouldn’t, so long as they put their faith in Infallibles like him.
      He caught a whiff of smoke, noticed a red glare on the horizon, heard screams. And then he remembered. Oh, crap! In his haste to seduce a new mistress, he’d left a fire burning in Athens.

Inspired by Out of luck at the Soup Kitchen. Image of Zeus and Europa, by altceva.

Out of luck at the Soup Kitchen

We run out of soup and have to scramble to replenish trays, plates and cutlery. They keep coming. Have the holes in our safety net grown? Are more people falling through? I see the frayed edges of lives barely held together. The relentless slog from soup kitchen to food bank and back again wears on them. But they are us, without the lucky breaks. Some barely speak. Some won’t shut up. Some laugh too loudly. Some scream. Most indulge in petty dramas. But all, conditioned long ago by mothers and kindergarten teachers, never fail to say please and thank you.

Inspired by In a Time of Hunger. Photo by Nancy Kay Clark

In a time of hunger

In a time of hunger

there is much abundance which cannot be reached,

there are memories of uncertain times,

there are barren gardens beside deep luxuriant pools.

In a time of hunger

politicians and psychics

predict financial hardships and broken hearts,

encourage our fears then charge us

for false spirits to cure them away,

offer their red hands full of hopes and prayers.

In a time of hunger what can be done? I have

no media prowess nor extrasensory powers

so I fight

the politicians and psychics

with a rich harvest, flowers from a friend and

love on a wing.

Inspired by Our Drug of Choice. Photo by Fred Ni.

Flash in the Pan

No one uses flashlights anymore. We all use our phones. So boring and dull. Flashlights tap into our imaginations. Revealing the obvious and conjuring up the unseen. Giving permission to our minds to percolate on subconscious fears. Flashlights remind us of camping, dark starry nights, and horror movies. A rush of adrenaline as we anticipate what may lay behind their last shimmer of light.

Flashlights led us to personal connections with other humans. Guiding us to familiar faces. Showing us the way to our neighbours, friends, family—our community. Not alone, texting mindlessly by the halo of blue light. 

Inspired by August 14, 2003. Photo by Wendelin Jacober.

August 14, 2003

The power had been out since four and, being there was nothing else to do in the house, I decided to grab a flashlight and follow my curiosity down to the lake, hoping to see the stars freed from the dimness we city-folk accept as dark . . . and Mars, of course, which had been in the news for a week, the nearest to Earth it had been in the last 60,000 years, a little orange dot dancing through the trees as I walked along the shore, hanging over the dark downtown, brighter even than the aircraft warning lights, higher than the towers.

Inspired by the anniversary of the 2003 Blackout and maybe a bit by the 1990 Blackout. Photo by Lucas Oleniuk for the Toronto Star.

Rose City Barbies

Ken’s head made a satisfying pop when pulled from his body, followed by a delicious squish-squash as molars met polyvinyl chloride. I loved decapitating Ken, but it came at a price. One day, me and the other Douillard Road guttersnipes were playing Barbie-Goes-to-the-Circus. We used the sewer drain as a tightrope. After a death-defying leap, Ken landed safely on the curb but his now-bobbling noggin splashed into the abyss. With a coat hanger and a deft hand, mom retrieved it. It poached for weeks in a jar of alcohol. Afterwards, Ken was only a pale version of his former self.

Inspired by Our Drug of Choice. Image by Passagems on Etsy.

Our Drug of Choice

Wildfires have scorched thirteen million hectares in Canada. Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes. Floods sweep away bridges, roads, children. Overseas, it’s fifty degrees Celsius in some Iranian cities. Super-charged typhoons inundate China. The sea off Florida is warmer than a hot tub. The UN Secretary General just announced that Earth has passed beyond warming into an era of global boiling.

     Lobster, anyone? 

     Oh, don’t think about that! Be happy! Beyoncé’s tour is incredible, and Taylor Swift is coming! And those summer blockbusters . . . catch them all before it’s too late!

     This summer, we've swapped hopium for Barbieturates.

Inspired by Little Sadists. Photo by Sofia Furió.

For a sense of scale, thirteen million hectares is the size of Greece—which has also suffered devastating wildfires this summer.

Little Sadists

That summer, I remember the grasshoppers were so plentiful in our suburban yard that clouds of them flew out of the way of my father’s lawn mower. We caught them and put them in jars with little bits of grass, punching air holes through the lids, but not bothering to feed them. I remember they bled an oozy yellow, when we pulled their legs off. Better yet, in those long hot afternoons of childhood boredom, curiosity and sadism, we offered our hoppers to any mantises we found and watched the praying arms grasp the frantic hopper and bite deep.

Inspired by Baby Bummer (via Beatles = beetles = bugs). Photo by Jon Brierley .

Baby Bummer

I don’t care what the demographics say, I am so very tired of being lumped with the last of the Baby Boomers. Like most members of Generation X, I grew up feeling I’d missed out on something big, that there was some sharp delineation between the Flower Children and being an actual child growing up in the 1960s; and I think it comes down to the Beatles.

     Because, whereas some in my cohort may have been introduced to the band by an older brother or sister, us early Gen-Xers didn’t truly experience the Fab Four until their titular Saturday-morning cartoon.

Inspired by Words of Wisdom. Character design by Peter Sander, image from The Beatles Wiki.

He flies through the air, with the greatest of fleas, that daring young cat in his stripey jammies

All our pets have their special songs, but Badger has the most. First a song praising how his lithe kitten body walked a favorite handrail. Then the “Tuna Juice” song to lure his finicky adult self to dinner. Later, “Badger Needs His Medicine” a twice-daily ditty heralded his methimazole ministrations. After he became deaf, gentle, rhythmic pats of air behind his ears gave him a tune he could feel rather than hear. Badger died last week in his twentieth year. Just me and him and the “Puff Puff” song telling him he’d been a beautiful, brave boy worth singing about.

Inspired by Words of Wisdom. Photo, “Fishing for Cat Porn,” by Laurie.

Words of Wisdom

It was over, that was obvious. The band was falling apart. He sat despondent in the empty studio, feeling spent, empty, without ideas, uninspired. Clearly he would never write again, never move others as he'd always done before. He felt grief at the thought. “Woe is me,” he mumbled, tinkling the keyboard in accompaniment, “woe is me.” He repeated the words, voice rising, voice falling, again and again, lamenting. 

      After several hours Mary, the kindly old cleaning lady, looked in from the hall. “Oh Paul,” she whispered. “Poor darling! Just let it be.” 

      McCartney startled and straightened at the piano . . .

Inspired by The Full MAPL. Image from a photo by Max Scheler.

The full MAPL

Those few years before my girlfriend realized that she and her last boyfriend weren’t meant to be still gave him more than enough time to move his band up the Canadian charts, culminating in a wildly successful song of his love for her. Of course it mentions her by name—over and over and over. He even gave her a share of the royalties.

     His love for her still plays on the radio all summer long. His love for her still brings in a few hundred dollars a year.

     And how the hell am I supposed to compete with that?

Inspired by Ton front est ceint de fleurons fanées! and Claire. Full MAPL logo adapted from this partial MAPL logo by M-Greco.

Ton front est ceint de fleurons fanées!

Yesterday, we realized on our way to the subway that neither of us brought masks. Also, Rich flew our Canada Day flag for the first time since the pandemic. It’s all Time and Context. We are a relatively young country so collectively, we behave like four-year-olds: We want to do the right thing yet keep forgetting or reinventing what that means. Then we feel bad, buy a T-shirt, listen to CBC, and start again. But I am grateful to be here, to be born under Treaty 2. It’s sure complicated, being Canadian, but it’s still our home on native land.

Inspired by The Canada Day Convoy. Image by desifoto with graffito by Roy, using a font by Tepid Monkey Fonts.

The Canada Day Convoy

Canada Day, and there it was, a two-truck convoy of flag wavers, headed towards Ottawa. I immediately thought of last year’s lengthy occupation on Parliament Hill. I angled through traffic for a look at the flags, expecting them to propose, with a four-letter Anglo-Saxonism, an act of fornication with the prime minister; or to attack David Suzuki and his ilk for their annoying obsession with science. But no, this was no protest. It was a Canada Day love-in, in more ways than one. Both trucks proudly flew the Maple Leaf rampant and, beside it, a banner that read “I❤️Hot Moms.”

Inspired by stuff you see on the highway and Woodland Protocols for Canada Day.

And orange you glad that he didn’t?

Over the years, the LEGO Group has released a number of Batman sets, including a couple from the original television series which, among its many guest villains, included the great Latin Lover, Caesar Romero, as the Joker.

     Now, Romero was a vain man, and he refused to shave off his signature moustache for the role, but in those days of lo-res TV, this actually wasn’t much of a problem at all. They just slathered on the white pancake make-up, and nobody noticed. Decades later, though, when they finally released Batman on DVD, well . . . everyone noticed.

     Including the good folks at LEGO.

Inspired by Andy Reed’s stolen comic collection. Photo by the author. Orange wedge inspired by the late, great Gilbert Gottfried.

Only a Tyne Resemblance

In the ’seventies I really, really wanted to look like Marcia Brady, or maybe Jan, especially after that family vacation in Hawaii episode where they showcased their new boobs and long straight blonde hair. But no, not even a luke-warm ringer. In pure ’tween mortification, my doppelganger was . . . Tyne Daly.

     What thirteen year old gets linked to Tyne Daly? It started in grade nine after some St. Anne’s boys went to see The Enforcer. “Wow,” says one . . . you look just like that lady cop.” It could have been worse, I guess. I once met a baby who looked like Alfred Hitchcock.

Inspired by Nameless. Photo collage by Roy Schulze.

Nameless

I wrote a book that had a character a lot like me. He had many of my experiences. He lived in my neighbourhood. His family was a lot like mine. I knew people would assume he was me, that they’d see an anagram in any name I gave him. (“Hah! ‘Tom Ronson’ is really ‘Ron Thompson,’ right?!”) All the names I considered sounded false, so I avoided naming him at all. I completed the book without calling him anything. I found virtue and freedom in his anonymity. He was an everyman, a vessel, a doppelgänger who was and wasn’t me.

Inspired by Contemplating Fate & Destiny. Image by Dover Thrift Editions. The book I referenced is A Person of Letters. Let me tell you, it’s hard, and probably pretty dumb, for a first-time novelist to go novel length and not name his protagonist.  

Contemplating Fate & Destiny

I collect other Nancy Clarks. In the early ’80s at McGill during registration (before the process went online), I was given her forms by mistake (and she mine). I stood in the middle of the crowded gymnasium calling my name. She was shorter than me.
     According to Google, I’m a physiotherapist from Michigan with bouncy hair and a winning smile. In Nova Scotia, I find my gravestone. I die at 80, in case you’re wondering. In B.C., I am already dead, my name among the list of those scraped out of the muck in the pig pens at Picton’s farm.

Inspired by Seduction of the Innocent. Nancies Clark collage by Roy Schulze.

Seduction of the Innocent

I knew a kid in Grade 7 who liked to show off his comic collection, who made the mistake of showing it off to a kid in our class named Ned Kent, who then told his brother, who then told his friends, who then got together to steal the whole thing from Andy’s bedroom.
     I was catching up with Andy a while back, not long after I’d heard that Ned had died in his forties.
     “Fuck Ned Kent and his brother for stealing my comics!”
     So, I told him how Ned had died.
     “Fuck Ned Kent for making me care!”

Inspired by My late mother's collections. Seduction of the Innocent cover by Museum Press, London, 1955.

Daily Records

Empty Glass, Whooligans, Quadrophenia, Who’s Next, Who Are You, Face Dances, The Who by Numbers, Tommy, All the Good Cowboys Had Chinese Eyes, White City, Rough Mix…they all went for a quarter each in the Great Album Diaspora of 1988 when my parents decided to sell all my music thinking now that I was married and living in the big city these salad-day trappings would mean nothing to me. Some lucky bastard put down a $20 and scored the lot, leaving only La Soeur Sourire and the Cowsills in Concert. I’d call that a bargain, the best he ever had.

Inspired by The China Cabinent.

The China Cabinet

After the funeral, he settled into a solitary routine. When the funeral platters were finished, he ate a microwaved Swanson every night at the table where they’d shared their meals. Afterwards he’d linger there, staring into the China cabinet. She’d collected decorative plates, the souvenir kind, kitschy mementos of Disneyland, Mount Rushmore, Nashville. One day he boxed them all up and hauled them to the car, drove to the Niagara Escarpment, carried them to the cliff edge, and spun them like frisbees out into the void. He missed her desperately, but she should never have thrown out his Dylan records.

Inspired by My Late Mother's Collections. Photo by Jane Stotesbery.

My late mother's collections

Stamps, mint and postmarked, including a shoebox full of stamps still glued to bits of envelopes;
Postcards, carefully pasted into scrapbooks in the early days, later in giant bundles;
Love letters she received, only one set is from my father;
Her school report cards;
Dolls sporting national costumes;
Shoes (all uncomfortable);
T-shirts, all oversized and hand embroidered by her;

Part of the lace trim collection.

Souvenir beer mugs;
Lace trim and scraps of material;
Christmas decorations and ornaments;
House plants;
Decorative plates;
Bird houses;
Costume jewelry;
Miniature porcelain tea sets;
Perfume bottles;
Fridge magnets;
Beads;
Bottle caps;
Dress-up clothes;
Colouring books and markers;
Dust and memories.

Inspired by all the stamp collecting stories.  Photo by Nancy.

Perforations

Was a time Canada Post took a much more conservative approach to their commemoratives, when a person needed to be at least ten years dead before the post office would even consider putting their face on a stamp. There were exceptions, of course, for Prime Ministers and Governors General, but perhaps the first and best exception they made was on April 13, 1982 when the post office released a stamp commemorating Terry Fox, who had died less than one year before. A fitting tribute to a national hero . . . and yet, going forward, it was clear now that all bets were off. 

Was a time when the only living person Canada Post would put on a stamp was the reigning monarch, that is until August 15, 2005, when they commemorated Oscar Peterson. Another good choice, I suppose, except that now, almost two decades after lifting that restriction, you don’t need to be dead; you don’t need to be Canadian; hell, you don’t even need to be human!

Yeah, that’s right, Mr. Spock got his in 2016—with, at best, a tenuous connection to his Canadian co-stars—and yet they still haven’t honoured Keanu Reeves . . . which is why I had to fake one up.

Inspired by Time Stamp. Terry Fox’s stamp by Friedrich Peter, Spock’s by Kosta Tsetsekas.

Time Stamp

Recently, Astrid and Dave sent Rich a birthday card. The envelope had the new king’s head on the stamp. One of the first signs of succession. But like many of us who only knew Elizabeth, it just looked weird. Anachronistic, like the ones of George VI in my collection. It reminded me of those commemorative plates, bought at Shanfields by dutiful Windsorites, safe-kept in that cupboard above the fridge, mired in decades-old kitchen grease and cigarette smoke. And never, ever used for anything. But really, what would you serve on a Charles and Camilla platter, anyway? Something eggy and crustless?

Inspired by I’ll Get to It Eventually. Image courtesy of Laurie’s fridge.

I’ll Get to It Eventually

Monarchs and presidents. Exotic, sometimes defunct countries. Historical figures and events. Stamps fascinated me as a kid. I became a collector, but my meager allowance necessitated frugality. I couldn’t afford to buy stamps, even cancelled ones. If a keeper arrived on a letter, I tore it off, pealed it from its backing, and pasted it into a notebook. Eventually I fell far behind with everything except the tearing part. The stamps went into a box till I got to them. I never did, and the boxes accumulated. I’ll get around to them, eventually, a life-roughened kid with his well-travelled stamps.

Inspired by Stamp Collecting. Image from Mail Adventures.

Stamp Collecting

My parents were both fifteen, shy, awkward. If he wasn’t playing baseball, and she wasn’t watching him play baseball, he’d visit on a Saturday afternoon. They would sit on her front porch, sipping lemonade, maybe, or coke directly from bottles he brought over from his mother’s depanneur. And they’d work on their collections, swapping stamps, two French for one Australian, dreaming of visiting those places. Did they draw their chairs close? Whisper to each other stuff they didn’t want the adults to hear? And under a light summer rain, pitter-pattering on the porch’s roof, did they lean in to kiss?

Inspired by the image for Six Degrees of Peameal Bacon. Photo by Nancy Kay Clark.

Six Degrees of Peameal Bacon

When Gordon Lightfoot died this week, my friend Peter posted a photo he’d taken of the two of them together—not just some selfie he was lucky to catch outside a concert: Peter and Gordon were friends. In a similar vein, my sister hung around with Keanu Reeves’s sister—all of us together at Jesse Ketchum P.S. In high school, I was friends with two of Margaret Atwood’s nephews and—decades later—my daughter attended the same daycare as her grandchildren. Toronto likes to fancy itself a bustling world-class city, but I swear we’re really just a small town, overblown.

Inspired by Pussywillows, Cat-tails, Soft Winds and Roses. The photo collage was created by the author. The Lightfoot stamp he found was part of series, designed in 2007, by Circle Design Incorporated. The Atwood stamp was designed in 2021 by Steven Slipp. The photo of a young Keanu Reeves is from the Michael Ochs Archives; the older Keanu was photographed by Anna Hanks; and the fake stamp, itself, is based on a 2014 definitive designed by Entro. And by this point, one has to wonder if the acknowledgments for a 100-word story should be as long as the story itself.

Pussywillows, Cat-tails, Soft Winds and Roses

The Wreck of the Edmund FitzGerald was mine. Its Asus-Em-G-D chord progression was easy to play, and its words ahoy’d my inner pirate. I knew where the Mariner’s Church in DE-troy-AT was, and I knew the song before I knew the singer.

It was Madeleine, my uncle’s girlfriend, who introduced me to his music. Since then, there’s a weird anomic sadness when I think of Madeleine and Gordon Lightfoot. She led a charmed life in The Time Before Ed: cocktails, good furniture, youth, beauty, Sundown on the HiFi. Something must have happened to make her shack up with a Leclair.

Inspired by Madeleine (1942-2008) and GL (1937-2023). Image of Madeline‘s fancy chest, as I remember it, by Quality is Key.