impressing the girls
11/27/08
as a little boy, I liked little girls ... I especially liked Dorothy Cramp ... she had blond ringlets and sat a few seats ahead of me in grade one
on Valentines Day, Mrs Lawson announced that we could sit with whomever we pleased and I immediately ran up and pushed in beside Dorothy, who promptly pushed back, sending me sprawling into the aisle
Dorothy and I met many years later at the high school reunion and our feelings for one another hadn't changed
12/03/08
a friend said today that, after only two weeks with her son, Rufus was a changed dog—he now heeled, sat, came when called, and no longer jumped up on people or the couch ... she spoke as though these were desirable qualities in a dog, and some of them are ... but if I were a dog, I suspect that trotting along soberly at my master's heels would be way down my list of favourite things and, as convenient as it might be sometimes, I would never ask it of Island Girl ... she's a happy, exuberant, curious creature who can be a real handful on the leash, but I wouldn't have it otherwise
'You're allowing that dog to lead you,' the woman said. 'Not so,' I replied, 'I'm leading, she's setting the pace'
though she's been trained by others to sit for a treat and will readily do so, I never ask her to—she's my friend ... experts tell me dogs enjoy performing for favours, and some may, but I've never heard this from a dog ... I suspect what Island Girl likes most is having the freedom to do as she pleases and, as much as possible, this is what I give her
12/07/08
in the late seventies, a creative writing instructor praised me in class a few times and I overreacted—I quit my job as Manager of Personnel Services for a large investment dealer, bought a portable typewriter, and with little to say and matching talent, set out to become Mark Twain ... I was a man with a jet pack on his way to the moon and had about two years to get there if I watched my spending
a few months into it, impatient to impress the girls, I began to read my work aloud at every opportunity ... if you invited me to your party or to dinner with friends, I'd ask if I could bring along and read some of my stuff
twice while reading aloud to a handful of people, someone nodded off midway through the second page ... one guy slumped right off his chair onto the floor ... on another occasion, after I'd read to a group at a house party, I overheard my performance described as 'fifteen minutes of turgid prose' ... this was true, and it wasn't long before the flow of invitations dried up
I then began the practice of going for a drink or two each evening at Phil's, a local bar from which I'd entice girls back to my apartment on the pretext of sex, then read them stuff I'd written ... I was merciless
12/11/08
my first marriage caught me by surprise ... I was twenty-four at the time, unattached, and had only recently bought a new sports car, so marriage was the farthest thing from my mind the day I learned I had a child on the way
I responded by doing what I thought was expected of me, and it wasn't till four years later, while reading something in a magazine, that I realized I had options and, not long after, moved into what had once been the library in a big old house on Russell Hill Road
six years later, I married a second time ... through no fault of my wife, this second marriage lasted little beyond the going-outside-to-fart stage ... I emerged from it with a coffee table and a HIS towel and, after dropping off my change-of-address notices at the post office, experienced a peacefulness I'd never experienced before and haven't since
though I haven't married again, I've lived with women over the years, some of them twice, and they remain my friends ... with a few of them, my insecurity prompted tentative proposals of marriage but, thankfully, one of us always had the presence of mind to give me a good shake
12/13/08
on the subway today, I overheard two women enthusing about royalty, about the Queen in particular ... though I have no strong views on the subject of royalty and don't dislike the Queen, I do wonder, sometimes, how all this bowing and scraping nonsense could have been allowed to continue for as long as it has
except in jest, I can't imagine ever bowing to an unarmed rich person, especially one who's okay with it ... as I see it, one person showing obeisance to another who accepts it reflects as badly on the one as the other
12/16/08
a friend has recently credited me with being a great teacher, which strokes my ego certainly, but is not a tag I'm at all comfortable with ... if I know the material, I've been known to be a competent instructor ... but a great teacher? ... I couldn't handle the responsibility
I don't presume to have any more answers than the next guy, nor any fewer, for that matter ... I simply do my best to live life honestly, with no apologies, and with good will toward all ... the good will I've always had and, to a large extent, the honesty ... the confidence to be who I am and say what I think, however, has been a long time coming ... I would like to have enjoyed its benefits sooner
12/25/08
Island Girl's owners, Bob and Liz, invited me for cocktails and dinner this evening ... Bob is eighty-five going on fifty, and Liz, his partner of more than thirty years, is late-fifties-early-sixties ... they are a bright, fun-loving, zestful couple who clearly love one another and have never stopped making each other laugh ... at one point, Liz called out, "Where are you, Bob?"... "I'm sitting on the edge of my bed," he replied, "wondering if I'm alive" ... I like them almost as much as I like their 'daughter', who slept at my feet throughout dinner
12/28/08
frustrated by years of bad luck with an array of other more-advanced, more-stylish lighters, I recently returned to simpler times with the purchase of a Zippo ... my first lighter had been a Zippo and there were good memories attached
what I'd forgotten was that, with a Zippo, when you're not flicking your thumb raw trying to ignite it, you're setting your face on fire
if matches were only now being introduced, there's little doubt I'd be blown away by their ingenious simplicity and make them my lighter of choice ... so I've done that
01/01/09
a friend has emailed from Florida that she had a very quiet New Year's Eve—a few drinks earlier with a friend, she said, then watched the ball drop and went to bed
I replied that I, too, had had a quiet New Year's Eve, though less-crowded and shorter
as usual, I was asleep before the ball dropped ... if they'd drop it on something, à la David Letterman Show, there'd be reason to stay up
01/08/09
having recently experienced its powers firsthand, I can now understand why strangers, after only a few weeks of romancing one another in cyberspace, leave their jobs and families and catch the first plane to the coast ... I used to think, 'How could anyone be so stupid?' ... now I know
my own experience with this began as a periodic correspondence between artists enamoured of one another's creative talents, and stayed that way for many months ... then, for whatever reasons, during the week following Christmas, the volume and tone of this correspondence took a sudden turn and, in days, we'd become the stuff of dreams and were crazily impatient to be in one another's arms ... we could neither eat nor sleep for imagining the blissfulness ahead ... I wrote to her at the time, 'Today, I've forced down an order of chicken teriyaki in the Yonge/Eglinton food court, just to have eaten something more than an apple and a few handfuls of popcorn'
as it became evident where we were headed, I did what I'd been putting off doing for a long time—I ended my run as 'the other man' in a relationship that, for several years, had been sapping my spirits ... I freed myself for whatever lay ahead
as you've probably guessed, what lay ahead was reality, which doused the flames of passion, silenced the choir and, after a few days, restored our appetites ... but though the lunacy was ended, its effects endure—I'm still unleashed, and I continue to enjoy the friendship of a woman whose response to my writing encourages me to write more and has been the inspiration for adding this feature to my site ... hooray for lunacy
01/10/09
for as long back as I can recall, I've admired the letter-writing ability of female friends ... to some, I can email a couple of paragraphs I've laboured over for an hour to make appear unlaboured-over and, within minutes, receive back cogently-written, page-long accounts of what's going on in their lives—like they're sitting there talking to me ... by contrast, male friends, if they reply at all, are likely to do so briefly and as though writing in a foreign language ... either that or, stymied by the challenge, they forward jokes
01/11/09
along with the benefits of being single again have come the drawbacks ... news of my availability coupled with wildly fabricated accounts of my seductiveness have been leaked onto the internet by a jokester friend and there has been a steady stream of women to my apartment door all afternoon, some with lighted candles ... I enjoyed the first five or six, but a man has his limits, so the reviews since then have been poor and worsening ... the chorus of swooners in the hall, thank God, has shrunk to a trio
01/13/09
I've rarely felt more attractive than I did one Monday morning back in 1960 ... I was twenty at the time, had a couple of rooms in a house near Yonge and St Clair, and worked as a mail boy for a downtown ad agency eight subway stops away
I'd become accustomed to Monday-morning commuters being a usually downcast, hopeless bunch, but on this particular morning they couldn't have been less so ... from the moment I entered the train, there was a remarkable air of jolliness and good will, which seemed—a lot of it, anyway—directed at me ... each new boarding brought more of the same, so the farther we travelled, the better I felt ... it was wonderful ... by the time we reached Queen station I was a full inch taller and knew something of what it must have been like to be Errol Flynn ... as the train entered the station, I moved confidently to the door and saw there, reflected in its window, a young man in a business suit with a piece of toilet paper stuck with blood to the end of his nose
that was the one and only time I've ever nicked my nose shaving, but it hasn't been the only time I've worn my little bits of toilet paper in public ... the Monday-morning crowds, however, have been indifferent ... for them, the toilet paper must be on the nose
01/14/09
I've just been sent a four-photo powerpoint of Niagara Falls frozen in place by the 1911 cold spell ... one of the photos is described underneath as 'very rare', which gave me pause, for the photo looks far more commonplace than rare sitting here on my desktop ... can it be both? ... I suppose what's meant is that original copies of the photo are rare, though I don't see this mattering much, anymore, except to a collector
the ease with which computer images may be downloaded and copied these days means that those of us who sell images on the internet are likely to have many more nonpaying customers than paying ones ... we can watermark our work, of course, which some do, but while discouraging or slowing down the sticky-fingered, watermarks are also an annoyance to everybody else ... I prefer my work to be seen at its best and, if found annoying, to be judged so on its own merits without the help of watermarks ... that some people, as a result, may steal my images doesn't concern me
01/17/09
as you might assume from an earlier remark, I'm not a royals-watcher ... this excerpt, however, from the soon-to-be-released Backstairs at Buckingham, by Alistair Rutherford, caught my eye and may interest you, as well:
'Every so often, after dinner, Queen Elizabeth makes herself up to look like Helen Mirren and, at dusk, slips out for a few hours of doing as she pleases. Well—not entirely as she pleases: movie fans being what they are, autographs must occasionally be signed and photographs posed for. Otherwise, she is rarely imposed upon.'
poor Helen—when this gets out, she'll be taken for the Queen in disguise and draw crowds everywhere she goes ... and so will the Queen
01/19/09
Knuck has been a friend since age five ... his real name is Ron, but calling him Knuck comes more easily ... the name derives, I think, from Knucklehead, though I have no memory of ever calling him that and it wouldn't have suited him, anyway, for he's anything but
following high school, he taught for several years, married another teacher, then returned to school for his law degree ... he then began lawyering in Guelph, where he continues to practice criminal law to this day ... till recently, he and his family lived in Fergus, close to Guelph, in a beautiful old house on a tree-lined street close to the river ... when I had a car, I'd drop by from time to time for a visit
on one such occasion—a warm summer evening after sunset—Knuck and I grabbed a beer from the fridge and strolled on over to the river, where we walked to the centre of a pedestrian bridge and stood chatting for a while in the quiet of night ... though it wasn't our practice to exchange views of one another, for some reason we did that night—Knuck said that what he'd always liked about me was that I never wanted anything; I replied that what I'd always liked about him was that he never tried to stop me when I wanted to leave
though I didn't think to say so at the time, there's another thing I've always liked about Knuck—he doesn't mince words ... more than once, he hasn't minced them directly at me, but while I haven't always liked what he had to say, I've always admired the prick's willingness to say it
01/20/09
this is not, as the date suggests, Inauguration Day—it's the day after ... I scrapped what was here yesterday, which began with my watching George depart in a helicopter, then veered sharply into a comparison of helicopters with gliders ... it was bad writing rushed to press and foolishly rushed, at that, for there were no readers—they were all watching television
while, in the larger sense, I'm relieved by George's departure from office, watching his actual physical departure in the helicopter yesterday made me anxious—because of the helicopter ... of all man's flying machines, these impress me as being the least likely to remain aloft and, whatever my views of George, I wish him no harm
Obama strikes me as really meaning to make a difference and having the tools to do it ... he has already raised the bar worldwide for what people, from here on, will expect of their leaders and believe to be their due as citizens ... we're all going to benefit from this—that's my prediction
I'm also predicting that Obama will leave the presidency after four years and start his own religion
01/23/09
I was visited recently by an otherwise likable young man who believes there is a conspiracy afoot to take over the world
I asked him to name three countries that haven't proven, at the very least, to be complete pains in the ass to govern and, with nearly two hundred to choose from, he couldn't name a single one ... yet he continued to insist there's a group of men think they can govern the whole shebang ... 'If they exist,' I said, 'they're idiots, and we have nothing to fear'
he also believes this same group controls our media, though he can't explain how, if this is so, he's been able to find this out—he has no explanation for why his sources, whose declared purpose is to expose and bring about the destruction of this group, haven't been shut down
the moon landings, too, he believes were a hoax ... he's prepared to accept that, with no higher purpose than to get a leg up in the space race with Russia, NASA staged the landings here on earth and, further, to keep word of this from leaking out, played an instrumental part in the fiery deaths of three in-the-know astronauts they feared might go public
not surprisingly, he believes as well that 9/11 was an inside job, claiming it was ordered by President Bush to influence congressional support for a strike against Iraq
'In effect,' I said, 'you believe that two recent Presidents are guilty of treason and conspiracy to commit murder' ... 'That's right,' he replied
'Suppose for a moment,' I said, 'that you are George Bush ... 9/11 hasn't happened yet but, in your madness, you've begun to believe that slaughtering thousands of your own people would be in the nation's best interest, and you've thought of a way to do it ... now, unless you plan to carry out the slaughter yourself so there'll be no witnesses, you will have to involve others ... to whom will you extend the first invitation ... who will you trust with your life? for that's what you'll be doing ... and who will he trust with his? and he? and on down the line ... to get the job done,' I said, 'a lot of people will have to be trusted and if there's a single misjudgment along the way, you can kiss your presidential ass goodbye
'Now,' I said, 'imagine it from the other side—imagine that you're the chosen one and that President Bush has just summoned you to the Oval Office and made you privy to his lunatic musing ... assuming you, yourself, are not a whack job, how are you likely to react? ... are you likely to think, "Hey, what a great idea!" and leap at the chance to partake of this madness? ... or are you more likely to think, "Holy shit, this fucker's nuts!" and at the first opportunity, turn him in?
'The odds,' I said, 'that an American President would be wacky enough to even contemplate killing his own people, let alone risk taking it to the next step, are unimaginably slim, but they're nowhere near as slim as the odds of two Presidents being that nuts—and so few years apart, at that'
he'd been listened far too attentively to be paying much attention and, sure enough, when I stopped talking, he resumed his dark preachments from where he'd left off earlier, as though I hadn't spoken at all ... I turned on the TV
01/27/09
for several days, arctic temperatures have been forcing any who venture outside to cover everything but their eyes, so in Sherwood Park, the only way we humans have been able to tell each other apart is by our dogs ... not that it's mattered much, for these are not socializing temperatures—peering at one another through slits in our scarving and half-waving our puffy arms is about as sociable as we've been getting
our dogs, on the other hand, have been racing about like school's out for the summer ... they absolutely love these conditions—the bigger ones do, anyway ... the small dogs aren't so keen, especially the tiny short-haired ones, some of whom are so physically overwhelmed by their winter attire, and so cold in spite of it, they can barely walk
it's hard not to speak up when you see a dog in misery, but representing a dog's best interests to its owner is risky business and, as a rule, I keep my mouth shut ... there are times, however, when you can't not speak up and last Thursday was one of those times—there was a woman just ahead of me on the trail who hadn't noticed that, beneath its massive pink carapace, her tiny dog was blue and had one eye frozen shut
while, for the dog's sake, it was important to act quickly, it was also important to broach the matter indirectly, so I engaged the woman in conversation about the craziness of our weather and with a zig and a few zags worked this around to recalling the time I was pitched into the icy waters of Georgian Bay while playing with a friend in a rowboat 'on a day very much like this' and how, as I struggled ashore, one of my eyes had frozen shut 'just like hers,' I said, pointing at her dog
till then, she'd been smiling ... 'Sophia's eye isn't frozen shut,' she said. 'She lost that eye six months ago to cancer—you might try wiping your glasses' ... I might indeed—I was viewing the world through rivulets of melted snow
I apologized inadequately and, after wiping my glasses, leaned forward and gave Sophia's quivering little head a few comforting strokes with the tips of my fingers ... she was too cold to care ... I could see that I'd been wrong about her colour, as well—she wasn't blue, she was honey-coloured in blue tights ... the woman was tugging impatiently at her leash ... there were no fond farewells
05/31/09
it has been four months since my last entry ... the path of least resistance draws me back and forth between words and pictures and sometimes away from both