The Eternal Other

A marked-up, post-it-flagged copy of Marian Engel's Bear (1976) in the neighbourhood library box. Not so marked up to distract me from its great writing and wry wit, especially after I removed its multicoloured flags. As for the marked passages (underlines, in blue ball-point), some references to "Indian" or "Indians", though most of them focused on the protagonist's feelings, what it is to be a woman in a mid-1970s Canadian novel.

I enjoyed Engel's Monodromos (1973, re-released a few years later as One-Way Street), which I have learned over the years is the book Engel lovers (or Bear lovers) never get through. Bear is shorter and more contained than Monodromos, and more symbolic, if not more hallucinatory. Once Engel describes the island estate that her protagonist, Lou, is there to catalogue, it's pretty much the bear and the woman who wants him.

Lucy Leroy is the "old Indian woman" who appears on the island (suddenly out of nowhere, we are led to believe?) and whom Lou discovers "babbling" to the bear, who is half inside and half outside his shed.

"Lucy's face crinkled with some inconceivable merriment. She did not look one hundred years old, only eternal. 'Shit with the bear,' she said. 'He like you, then. Morning, you shit, he shit. Bear lives by smell. He like you.'" (35)

The "eternal" other, right? Recall Ethel Wilson's description, via her Swamp Angel (1954) protagonist Maggie Vardoe (née Lloyd), of the Chinese in Vancouver's Chinatown: "... nearly all of them had the immemorial look which distinguishes their race." (18) 

Kingsway & Clark

There seems to be some life to the hole that was once the Cedar Cottage Pub at Kingsway and Clark Drive. The Aquilinis have strengthened the fencing, and an office on wheels has been tucked inside it. Any month now and they'll be sculpting rebar.

Cover to Cover

Two recent gifts from a couple weeks ago. The first (above), contributor copies of subTerrain #93; the second (below), a CD given to me by another publisher, Rolf at New Star Books, because he thought I might like the composer, Claude Vivier (1948-1983). Funny how similar these covers feel to me.

Garden Suite

Yesterday morning's crosstown bike ride to my accountant's justified all kinds of snacking and slacking off. Strangely, rather than act on that I happily, if not unconsciously, took on and avoided that which I often feel guilty about doing or not doing. Was it the exercise, or was it getting last year's and this year's taxes off my back? A bit of both? None of the above? No matter. It was a gorgeous day. Today's supposed to be a gorgeous day too.

The Tipper

The Tipper is a greasy spoon located on Kingsway, a couple of shops east of Victoria on the south side. Its interior is darkly-lit (an oxymoron?), and is made up of black-padded booths and chocolate-coloured wainscoting. If you're sitting near the window you can see the mountains of the Sechelt Peninsula.

Breakfasts at the Tipper are traditional meals, reasonably-priced, but I wouldn't want to eat there too often. No more than once a month.

Decorating the Tipper's small waiting area are drawings that at first look like they were made by children, but occasionally include those made by grown ups. The best of these drawings (not sure how that's decided, though I doubt it's a peer-review process) are tucked into the restaurant's clear plastic menu sleeves.

A menu that caught my eye last Saturday featured a drawing by Bob. I asked our server, the wry-smiling Slavic-eyed one, if she knows Bob, and she said, "Oh yeah, he just started taking lessons. Oh yeah, I know Bob."

Double Bill

Two recent acquisitions, both from AA Furniture & Appliance. In the Bedroom (2001), because Sissy Spacek is a great actor, and Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (2014), a film whose first reviews intrigued me, but I never got around to seeing because some forty-something Creative Writing MFA in a clown suit dismissed the film on Twitter because its lead, Michael Keaton, "seems creepy to me." Not sure how this "seems" stayed with me all these years, but it did, and like syphilis, it can make you crazy. 

The picture up top is Emma Stone's best scene, where she lays into Keaton (her story father) for sublimating his failures by taking her to task on her own. The picture at bottom is a video that went viral only an hour after Keaton's character got locked outside of the theatre's rear exit in his underwear while the play he wrote and was starring in was on a scene break.

Now a social media sensation (his daughter set up a Twitter account in his name that already has 80K hits), the play is no longer in financial jeopardy because the critic who vowed to "kill" it is, as the kids say today, irrelevant. "Believe it or not," says the daughter to the father, "this is power." And indeed it is. But what wasn't power by then was a newspaper critic who could kill a play. That reality was long gone. Especially a play starring a Hollywood celebrity.

Ignorance is said to be bliss. But is it a virtue, a quality? Is there such a thing as an "unexpected virtue"? Forrest Gump (1994) suggests as much, and since the release of that film, we've come to expect it. Donald Trump has made a career off the ignorance of others. The less U.S. Americans know about themselves, the more they will covet ignorance.  

The Artist Paul Wong

Paul commutes from 20th & Main to his studio in Chinatown. He slows for certain stretches because he knows who has coffee where and when. The Gene klatchers -- Glenn, Lawrence, Neil and Krista -- meet out front at 10:15am everyday. Friday's the day I join them. 

"Hello Paul."

"Well hello Misterturnerrrrr."