Breakfast At The Hospital...

Lavi, 1977

I got an email from a guy I haven’t seen nor heard from since 1977. He was my roommate, that was at Kibbutz Lavi, where I’d spent most of 9 months from the fall of 1975 until the spring of 1976. Then I went back for that summer, and everything was different.

At the end of July the H group was going home. The group had been together for a year, most were from England, some were from Scandinavia. So there we were, for some reason in my room, having a great party. We had a music box, and we had ELO, and Venus And Mars by Wings, and Wings At The Speed Of Sound. I remember not much. I was probably pretty drunk. There was girl named Deena K that I’d had a bit of a crush on. But I was dancing with Dina, who was, if I recall, Danish. And we dancing dancing dancing – all slow dances. And stuff. She invited me back to her room. I squirmed out of it. I can’t imagine why. She wasn’t Broom Hilda or anything.

Next morning I took off with Mike. Mike, who was Irish, had just gotten engaged to Juliet (her real name), who wasn’t. Mike was a wonderful guy. After he got engaged he went a bit off the deep end. He was still a wonderful guy, but now he was a wonderful guy with mental health issues. Still he and I took off, went south. Around noon we were sitting in the Beersheba bus station, eating soup. It was hot like crazy, the weather, not the soup - well, the soup too. But we agreed that eating hot soup cools you right off.

We got off the bus and ended up crossing the length of the Negev, got off at Eilat. It was a heat wave, in a city where heat wave was the permanent condition. It was so hot that street vendors could not sell water. We could barely move. So there we were, sitting on the beach, dressed in t-shirts and shorts, with our feet firmly implanted in the waters of the Gulf of Aquaba. We took turns getting up to buy soft drinks from one of the dozen vendors selling stuff by the beach. Tempo, Queen's, Coke. We’d each gulp down a bottle in 10 seconds. Go get another, Mike’d say. We’ve spent $20 on pop in 30 minutes, he’d say. Who cares I’d say.

We sat on that beach until sunset. We could not move. But I had a phone number on me. A friend of mine from back home was supposedly here. So I find a phone and dial, and there he is. Voila. He came to meet us and took us back to where he was staying. We had showers, I tried to have a cold shower but the water came out hot. We dressed and got whisked to a wedding celebration. There was a feast, champagne. It was crazy, we were beach bums, drinking champagne…

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They would not give me a seat, the bastards. The first Friday night, wherever I tried to sit, the seat was “taken.” Hey, this group had been together since September, here it was May, and they had no place for interlopers. It took some doing to force myself among them. But I did it. Not only did I manage to get a seat at their cursed table, but I got myself into the group, not, of course, as an official member, after all I was just a lowly volunteer, but I was in. Lee was my roommate, the guy that sent me the email, and there was Rodney and Nigel, and a girl named Ruthie, and Joanne, Lee’s girlfriend, and Roxanne from Manchester, and a Swedish girl whose face I can still see but whose name escapes me.

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I bought this LP that summer in some random record store in Tel Aviv. It's by Chava Alberstein and it's called "HALAILA HU SHIRIM" which literally means "the night is songs" but translates more accurately as "The Night Is Full Of Music." And they used to play that song on the radio so I knew it so I bought the LP.




But there was another song, at the end, called Song Of The Sea. And I didn't hear it until after I came home. And there was this place in Tel Aviv, a concourse, It was on Rechov Yaffo, that's Jaffa Road, which is a main street that runs along the Mediterranean. The concourse was actually built over the road, and it was between the Hilton Hotel, which was a fancy high rise, and the Marina Hotel, which was smaller, but fancy with an actual marina (boats) adjacent. And there was this screen that showed TV images. And I'd sit there by myself at night, with the warm breeze of the sea, and I'd go to one of the snack vendors and get coke, and I'd sit at a table, drinking coke, smoking Marlboroughs. And that song always reminded me of that place.

And now I listen, and it reminds me of the memory…

Busker

Playing flute under Westmount Square, Thursday, April 23, 2009, at around 1:30 PM...

It Won't Be In The Mail Until You Spell It Right...

I will share with you a quote. This is from page 164 of A Reading Diary by Alberto Manguel:

Dorothy Parker: “The two most welcome words in the English language are ‘Cheque enclosed.'”

I quote this not for its profundity, but for its spelling. I appreciate seeing “cheque” spelled correctly.

I got a letter from the school, the one my kids go to. It asked for a series of “post-dated checks.” I was scandalized. I suppose the secretary is American. Doesn’t matter, she needs a talking to.

Well that’s just from the office. But from the classroom… the kids bring home papers talking about color and honor, and I happen to know that the teachers are home spun Canadians. I suppose when a luminary such as Margaret Atwood uses spellings from south of the border, I can’t come down too hard on the teachers can I.

Yes I can. Maybe Atwood’s teachers didn’t teach right either.

Truly, though, a missing u or two isn’t so serious. But dropped consonants can drive me around the bend. I mean, the appointment was canceled. That just looks dumb to me. And when did worshipping become worshiping. That just looks plain wrong. I suppose if I were to explore a typical warehouse in Anytown, U.S.A, I would find a door marked “shiping and receiving?”

Then there are those brilliant entrepreneurs who insist on calling their businesses some variation of e-z not realizing that in Canada E-Z Storage, for example, would be pronounced “ee zed storage.” Maybe that’s what they meant. Maybe, on the other hand, it isn’t.

Alright I know, nitpicking, nitpicking. But you know? “Check” as a means of transferring money is obscene. And I don’t expect obscenities on letters I get from my kids’ school. Meanwhile my chequebook sits safely in my desk, guarded against those who can’t tell the difference between a beaver and an eagle…

New Libraries And Old Books

There is a display of seashells at the Eleanor London Public Library. There are some fancy well-furnished reading rooms, with comfy couches. There is art on the walls.

The library is open 365 days a year. There are 4 days when it closes at 5:00, and 361 days when it closes at 10:00. It opens at 10:00 AM every day. It is a 20 minute walk from home. As I said to a friend recently, the definition of paradise might be living in a community where the library is open every day until 10:00 PM.

I can’t complain, but here’s the thing. I also go to the big library downtown, the Grande Bibliotheque. It’s a newer building, but an older collection. And there’s the rub. The Eleanor London Public Library has a dearth of old books.

All the books in the fiction section are new. That’s not to say they were written or published last year, or in the last 10 years, or whatever, but one look tells me that they are all relatively new looking. They all have dust covers.

I went to find the shelf with McLean, that’s at the GB, because I wanted to read Stuart McLean, his Vinyl Café series. And I got to looking at what was on that particular shelf. And I saw the usual stuff: Larry McMurtry, Terry McMillan, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, Katherine McMahon. But then there are these books that don’t have the usual paper cover covered in plastic; they are just the original cardboard covers. These are books written in the early part of the 20th century, by authors whose status was undoubtedly greater than then it is now. These are books that whose printing date might be 50 or more years ago.

So go find, at the Eleanor London Public Library, a book by Clark McMeekin. Not there. Nor a book by Michael McLaverty, nor by Donald McLean.

McMeekin was an American author from Kentucky, who wrote about Kentucky. McLaverty was Irish, so move over James Joyce. And McLean, who did not do American Pie, was Australian.

There is only one McLean novel on the shelf; it’s called No Man Is An Island. McLaverty is represented by The Choice, School For Hope, The Gamecock and Other Stories, and In This Thy Day. And McMeekin has three entries: The October Fox, Tyrone Of Kentucky, and Welcome Soldier!. I think McMeekin is indespensible for anyone who fancies American literature; the others are no slouches either.

It was total serendipity that led me to these authors, all undiscovered treasures. It would not happen at the Eleanor London Public Library. So as nice as it all is there, I will have to keep snooping around the dusty shelves of the downtown library picking up all those old volumes that don’t sport dustcovers. I will let you know what else I find.

And by the way, neither McMeekin nor McLean turn up anything on Amazon…

Random Musings, April 12, 2009

It is Easter Sunday and so IGA is closed. But the mall is open. The kosher butcher is open, which is interesting, because he is normally closed on Sunday. He was open last Sunday as well, the Sunday before Pesach*. It is cynical, it seems to me, to stay closed every Sunday except during the busy season. It’s practical I guess, but it seems that it’s practical for the business, not so much for the customer.

I went to the Pharmaprix, got some bathroom tissue, some chocolate, a bag of Bisli. Most of the stores are closed today.

That didn’t prevent hundreds of people from congregating at the mall. Seniors, dozens and dozens of seniors. This is, as my kids like to point out, a geriatric community.

But my mission was not accomplished. We need things, and I won’t be able to go back until tomorrow after lunch, because I have commitments tomorrow morning.

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I finished that pulp novel by Jacqueline Park. She claims to have done much research, but her research didn’t turn up the fact that married Jewish women use a mikvah. That was as true in the 16th century as it is now, more true perhaps. There are other things that mark her as an outsider writing about a life she has no experience of.

And the story isn’t even that good.

The other book I finished reading is a history of disco, called Turn The Beat Around, A Secret History Of Disco. The book is by Peter Shapiro, and it’s kind of disjointed – a bit here, a piece there. 90% of the music I’m unfamiliar with, and much of it isn’t disco.

So I just started reading Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark, and reading Muriel Spark is (almost) always inspiring. This was written in 1970, so it was before she started to burn out; I picked it up at Book Events in Alexis Nihon Plaza.

An aside: I found Book Events when I first came to this city, just before my first day of work, which was a half day on Wednesday afternoon, I detoured into Alexis Nihon and came upon the mid-mall book counter. In those days they sold a lot of tech books; they are all but gone now.

So Spark, I found it there, for $4.00, the original price was $18.99, and the book is a small paperback, just over 100 pages long. Wow. The Ariel Sharon autobiography I’m reading is a good read, but it would be better if the author (co-author presumably, or possibly an uncredited translator) didn’t keep using “insure” when he means “ensure;” once or twice he uses “assure.” It’s not that difficult, really. The random split infinitives don’t do him any credit either.

Then aside from that there is the diary by Alberto Manguel. It’s not all the interesting, but it’s fascinating, if that makes sense. It always impresses me how people can write about nothing, and do it well. I think that’s what I’m trying to accomplish here.

I’m certainly writing about nothing, I’m just not convinced that I’m doing it all that well…

*Passover