What About Noodles?

I am not the world’s most sophisticated cook, but I make soup.

I don’t make the world’s most sophisticated soup. I have limits. I don’t use meat. I don’t use chicken, which may or may not be meat. That depends on how you feel about chicken being meat. I don’t use fish. My chicken soup has no chicken, and my chowder has no existence.

I have 4 soup recipes, and I alternate among them. All of them have beans. Besides those four, I have more. That means, doing a quick calculation, that I have more than four soup recipes. But I have four that I keep on an Excel spreadsheet, because they came from a cook book to which I no longer have access. I typed up the ingredients into an Excel file, without quantities, but that matters little, because I have no use for quantities. I don’t believe that quantities have any real meaning in soup. In cake, yes. In soup, no. The four recipes have names like white bean soup, black bean soup, Israeli bean soup. There is nothing, as far as I can determine, Israeli about Israeli bean soup. It doesn’t spit sunflower seeds on the bus or speak Hebrew or drive like a psychotic orangutan. It is tasty, which it has in common with many fine Israeli dishes, but it does not taste like hummous or bamba or chocolate lentils or noga bars.

One of the four is called Caribbean chicken soup. As the astute reader may have guessed, I don’t put any actual chicken into it, which is particularly fortunate, given that I have never seen Caribbean chicken on sale here. I put curry powder into it.

One of the soup recipes that I’ve been using the longest is for chickpea soup. I found it on the back of the label on a can of chickpeas. I don’t have that can anymore, but I remembered the recipe. It’s an easy one because you don’t have to fry anything. The onions, you could fry them if you want, but the recipe doesn’t call for it. Just chop them up and throw them in. Me, I fry the onions. I didn’t used to. I do now. Someone convinced me once that frying them brings out the flavour. If there’s one thing I like to bring out, it’s flavour.

Another one I like a lot is minestrone. I’m not sure if it’s ok to say "minestrone soup," because minestrone, as far as I know, is soup. It could be like saying "tuna fish," which is ok, or "salmon fish," which isn’t. Minestrone [soup] is really just chili, without the meat, and wetter. And with macaroni. And with some other different stuff. Minestrone isn’t really anything like chili.

The thing though, to think about, is soup powder. Soup powder is powder that you mix into water and heat up, and it becomes some kind of faux soup. It’s usually very salty, and full of MSG. And it’s a cheat. I buy chicken soup powder and vegetable soup powder and beef soup powder. None of it has any meat in it. None of it has anything with any nutritional value in it. Each flavour tastes like every other flavour. And I always add some to my soup. I do that because if I don’t do that there is never enough flavour in my soup. I’m still working on that, trying to wean my soup off of soup powder. And when I say always, I mean sometimes. Soup with tomatoes doesn’t need powder so much, because the tomatoes give it enough flavour. If I put soup powder into soup that has tomatoes, it could kill you.

And so I have soup for supper every day. I feed soup to my kids; some eat it; some don’t. Some of them are big soup eaters, meaning that they are small people who eat a lot of soup. Big soup eaters are small. I am a big soup eater. And I shall continue to make soup until I can make soup no more…

Floyd The Barber

I don’t remember the name of the barber that cut my hair in the summer of 1970. It wasn’t Pete. Pete was my regular barber, but he was away. It probably wasn’t Floyd. He didn’t listen to me when I told him how I wanted my hair cut. He interrupted me. He was very nasty, cut my hair too short. I spent the entire summer feeling bad about my hair. No 13 year old in 1970 wanted his hair to be short. In August I went with my family to Minneapolis. I bought a copy of Let It Be, an American copy with a red Apple label on it (the Canadian pressings had a green apple). I felt bad listening to it, because my hair was too short.

My barber’s name is Norma, and I’m betting that she’s a hair stylist, not a “barber.” She talks to me when she cuts my hair, and she cuts it how I like it.

Pete was ok but he was allergic to hair. His place was called Scissors Inn. (It’s still there.) He wore a mask because of his allergy. It seemed odd that someone with a hair allergy should become a barber, but it seems that his allergy developed from his occupation. He worked with a couple of other guys, and they had contests and magazines. The contests were you put your name on a paper, and they put the paper in a box, and once a month someone would win a scale model. One month I won a model of Quasimodo. The magazines were Playboy. They probably had others. I remember a mother reading one. She had a small boy with her, who presumably was the haircut patron. “Look,” she said to the small boy, pointing to something in the magazine. “Wow,” said the boy, glaring at something in Playboy. “I’ve never seen that before!” They both stared for a while. I worked very hard at surreptitiously finding out whether they were looking at a blonde or a brunette.

They were looking at a double page spread of sports cars.

When Pete left town, though, I got stuck with the evil barber on McGregor. He plays a part in my psyche to this day.

I outgrew Pete and ended up with Sal. He was at Garden City and eventually opened his own place. Last time I saw Sal, he was whining about his life to one of his colleagues. I didn’t enjoy that haircut. That’s why it was the last time I saw Sal.

I lived in haircut wilderness for a while until I found Pat. Pat, short, presumably, for Patrick, not Patricia, not only cut my hair how I liked it, but he had a perfect length beard. So I’d say trim it like yours and voila! Perfect beard.

The Greek barber near the IGA asked about my beard. ¼ inch I told him. He made it ¼ of ¼ of an inch. You could see parts of my face that had been hidden since I was 18. You have a fat face, said my second son. He didn’t use those exact words. What he actually said was something like you look different. But I knew what he meant.

I do my own beard now.

I’m happy with Norma the hairdresser. She asks me about my life, about my kids, about the holidays that are invariably coming up. There are always holidays coming up. She isn’t too chatty. She isn’t too quiet. She doesn’t whine. She doesn’t thrash what’s left of my hair to within a micron of its life.

The call came at about 3:00 PM one typical workday. “Are you interested in new opportunities? We have a position downtown.” It was a local headhunter. “No.” I said. “I’m very happy here,” I said. After all, I don’t want to lose Norma the hairdresser…

Saturday In The Park

Actually is was Sunday and it was the 14th of August...

It's still radio...

I listen to internet radio.

I have a real radio. It’s a clock radio that I bought at Zeller’s. It wakes me up to some random station I set it to. When I hit the snooze button it tells me the time. “Good morning, 4:54 AM” it tells me, in a woman’s voice. There is only one voice. No choices. In the PM, it just says “Hello” followed by the time.

I don’t use the radio for actual radio purposes. I haven’t listened to an old-fashioned radio since about 1980. Well, not on the radio, anyway.

I have taken, though, to listening to radio while I work. It helps to pass the day and to keep my soul from dying. I’m lucky that my young colleague, with whom I share an office, is indulgent. Indeed, he comments every so often. “This is pretty old” he says, referring to something that may have been recorded in 1990.

The real challenge, though, is finding suitable stations. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard. There are thousands of stations.

Try it. How many jazz stations can you find that play a good mix of 50s and 60s jazz. The answer, so far, is zero. You find stations that play Dixieland, classic jazz (that means Dixieland), cool jazz, bop, “smooth jazz” (as if there could be such a thing), vocal jazz, jazz trumpet, jazz saxophone. I like Mingus, Davis, Coltrane, Cannonball, Monk. But I can’t imagine listening to nothing but bebop from 7:30 AM until 4:30 PM. Mercifully AOL has a station called “Jazz Mix.” It’s not bad, eclectic style, but with a limited artist repertoire. So if you don’t mind hearing Louis Armstrong followed by Ella Fitzgerald followed by Miles Davis followed by Vince Guaraldi followed by Louis Armstrong followed by Ella Fitzgerald etc etc then you’ll be happy.

Classical music stations suffer from the same disease. Take your pick: piano music, vocal music, baroque, chamber music, symphonies. Baroque music is nice and all, but with all those staccato notes all day long, I’d get so jittery that I wouldn’t need my caffeine fix. Vocal music is an ok diversion, but listening to those sopranos and tenors scream their heads off all day… well… And hey, I love chamber music, nothing better than a good string quartet, but after a few hours it all starts to get kind of screechy. Again, AOL to the rescue: they have a decent “classical mix” station among their more narrowly focused selections.

Some of these internet-only stations play nothing but music streams; other mimic real-world stations with ads, station jingles, “announcements,” and the like. And I listen to those too. But the best, hands down, are the real-world radio stations, the ones that have news, and real life announcers, and up-to-the minute traffic and weather reports (and who cares if the traffic report is about the 401 into Toronto and the weather is the forecast for the Boston area), and even real commercials. I’ve tuned into classical music from Toronto and from The Netherlands, jazz from Hamilton, (pure coincidence that some of the best stations are Canadian?) country from San Francisco, oldies from Toronto (again), and even some stations from right here in Montreal (check out 99.5, quatre-vingt dix-neuf virgule cinq – ecoutez comme c’est beau! – one of the most idiosyncratic classical stations I’ve heard yet).

So having abandoned radio in my early adulthood, I have come back to it in my dotage. What goes around comes around. And what comes around is radio Bop, playing “all the hits YOU REMEMBER” from the first decade of rock and roll!, Merle Haggard and Kitty Wells from Loud City, Shostakovitch on NPR. My grandmother had a floor standing radio that I remember from her house and which now sits in my sister’s living room, and I had a vacuum tube desktop radio and then a little black transistor, and I now have high speed internet access that gets me Myrtle Beach in full fidelity, and I can email my request half way across the continent in a few seconds, but radio is still radio, and the feeling of having company while you work hasn’t changed.

So, what IS the forecast for Boston, anyway…

"Hear how nice it is..."

Help...

On Côte Ste-Catherine, near the Jewish General Hospital's outpatient pyschiatric clinic. I took this on August 1, 2011, not that it makes a difference...

Encore un jour à la bibliotheque

I got beeped on the way out of the library. BEEP! Like that. J’ai un livre d’une autre bibliotheque (I have a book from another library), I said to the lady. She passed it ‘round the sensors and I narrowly escaped arrest.

The people that work at the library are generally bilingual, but not so the individual books. I haven’t done any actual statistical analysis but my rough visual estimate tells me that about 30% of the books on the shelf are English. But they are all mixed up together (apart from fiction that is. The fiction sections are clearly marked romans français and romans anglais – the absurdity of marking the English section in French having occurred to no one).

Fiction aside, the books sit peacefully side by side. They don’t argue. The French books don’t try to separate from the English books and the English books don’t complain about having French “shoved down their throats.” Nobody insists that French books be bigger than English books. Nobody accuses the English books of not being “Quebecois.” Nobody at the checkout tells me that I have “too many English books.” The language police do not come here.

It’s the big downtown library I’m talking about. The library in Côte Saint Luc is about 90% English; the one in Ville Saint Laurent may be 60% French. Unlike the laws of this province, the book collections at our libraries reflect the linguistic needs of the communities they serve.

And so at la Grande Bibliotheque, as the central provincially operated downtown library is called, I approach the desk with a book to renew. “C’est pour renouveler” I say, hoping she won’t ask me to repeat it. She says the inevitable “pardon?” and my eyes must say “don’t make me say it again!” because she immediately follows with “pour renouveler?” and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Oui, si c’est possible…”

And I’m all set… until the sensor goes off….

Hail

August 1, 2011, Dollard des Ormeaux, QC

Never Talk To Strangers?

The woman was African and looked African – very dark. She was from The Ivory Coast, “Eevory Coast” she pronounced it. The man with her was French Canadian, and he was teaching her English.

I was supposed to be browsing used books. La Grande Bibliotheque, the downtown library, was having a sale, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I went to catch the tail end, wondering what dregs would be left. I showed up Sunday afternoon around 4:00, and couldn’t find a book sale anywhere.

I trudged around, asked a man at the information desk. Ou est le “marché aux livres?” I asked, where is the book market? “Pardon???” he said, which is what everyone says to me when I try to speak French. Is my pronunciation that bad? Apparently. “Pardon?” (You have to imagine the French intonation here – “PARRDOHH?” ) I gave up. There is a book sale somewhere? I asked in my best English. After looking at me like I was out of my mind he growled: “DAHRR!!! “à l’entrée!” I walked away back downstairs towards the exit and wondering how I’d missed it. “Dehors!” I realized suddenly. Outside. That’s what the gowl was. I love Canadian French. Words are never pronounced the way I expect them to be.

I wandered around looking for the book sale. I saw the signs, but no sign of the sale. Oh wait, there it was, another sign telling me that everything had been sold by Saturday afternoon, and the sale had ended prematurely. Nice. I saw the empty tables.

So I found a little coffee shop, still in the library building, though not in a part I’d ever been in, and indulged myself with some java, and found a table outside (Dahhrr!!) . And there I was in this little alley type place, looking up at the spires of a Catholic church in one direction, and in another direction I could see through the alley to the street and the stone buildings, and it’s one of those picturesque little spots that I keep discovering in this adopted city of mine.

And I was reading my book, and drinking the coffee, and marvelling at the weather, and the odd little spot that I was in, and the only other people around were at the next table, and the man was trying to get the woman to understand and say “it’s as if I had the book in my head.” “C’est comme si” he kept saying to her, “it’s as if,” and she kept trying to get it, “j’avais le livre dans la tête.” English, I thought to myself, is a hard language to learn.

And I got up to leave, and I thought, oh why not, and I walked over and I said, you are trying to learn English? And the man said to me, she is, but my pronunciation is not that good. (He had a slight accent, but it was good enough). She was, as I said, from the Ivory Coast. Combien de temps êtes-vous ici? I asked her, how long had she been here. Quatre ans she said, four years. You like it? I asked in English? Apparently she did. Il fait froid! I said, it’s cold here! She did not argue. It is hard to learn English I said, but her tutor assured me that she was determined, and would succeed. I wished her good luck, and headed back to the Metro.

I don’t know if my mother ever told me not to talk to strangers, but it matters not, because it is common wisdom. But it occurred to me as I walked away, that not only had I disregarded the said maternal injunction, but I’d had a very pleasant exchange with two very interesting people, and, for all the French I spoke to her, she did not say “pardon” even once…

Open House...

... Montreal style...

Sitting On The Fence...

Warning: Contains superficial content

When I was 10, I watched a fencing match at the PanAm Games. My father took me, and my kid sister came with us. (That's an irrelevant fact, about the sister, but there are family issues here that I can't get into.) I don't remember much about the fencing (let alone the sister, I don't even remember her being there) - who competed, who won - but it remains a piece of my personal history.

That was 1967. This is 2011. What I'm looking at now is the aftermath of a federal election. Now everything there is to say about the election has been said, or will be said, or even won't be said, and there's no need for me to add anything, and anyway the last thing I want to be is a political blogger. I'd like to keep my soul, thank you.

What I want to talk about here, besides fencing, is scenery. Around my neighbourhood, all those election signs have become part of the landscape, kind of like those à vendre and à louer signs that persist from year to year. I've gotten used to seeing Martin Cauchon's ugly face on each and every lamppost and hydro pole within 5 miles. Given the homonymic meaning of "Cauchon" (fr "cochon" = "pig") it's not difficult to imagine what the kids have done with markers. Still, Cauchon is Clark Gable compared to the now-disgraced Gilles Duceppe. Mulcair, the incumbent, I'd say he's presentable. I'd even date the guy, if I was into dating guys.

But what I really want to talk about, besides fencing, is the Bloc candidate. Her name is Elise, and if the poster pictures are accurate, well then she is, how shall I put this ... well... I'd say that she's drop-dead gorgeous.

How clever, I thought, in a riding where you don't stand a ghost of a chance, run a bimbo. You'll never get votes for political values or ideology, so go for looks. The concept, not totally untried in the world of political strategy, at least has aesthetic value. I found myself walking around the neighbourhood quite a bit over the past few weeks. And I got curious. So I decided to do some stalk... research, purely in the interest of political analysis of course. And what I found out was this:

1. She looks like this:

and ...

2. She is a fencing champion, if a Silver medal makes you a champion. She has played for Team Canada in the Pan Am Games, though it has been suggested that playing for Team Canada and running for the Bloc Quebecois are ideologically mutually exclusive. I will not render an opinion. She did better at fencing then at politics, where she garnered fewer than 4000 votes, and finished a distant third (maybe that’s a bronze).

I was thinking about all that when I walked into the polling station to vote Monday afternoon. I was confronted with a list of 7 (!) candidates, including communist and rhino, neither of whom I knew about beforehand. The ballot was plain text, no graphics, and that was good, because I ended up voting without reference to aesthetic considerations. When we get into online voting, though, with Flash and everything, well, it could change the face of democracy as we know it.

And tomorrow I’m going out to buy a sword...

Multiculturalism, Montreal Style...

Not All Lawyers Are Evil, Just Some...

I can’t remember the name of the gentleman whose personal injury claim was being handled by my colleague DG. “His kids have been apprehended,” he told me. “I’ll refer him to you.”

The client in question lived on a reserve, and had substance abuse problems. The kids weren’t exactly living with him but he needed representation so I got the Legal Aid certificate and opened the file. The initial hearing was scheduled in a makeshift courtroom in a town 300 miles northwest.

No email in those days. I had to use the phone. “I am representing him,” I told the crown attorney handling the file. She agreed to an adjournment for the particulars and the scheduling of a pre-trial meeting. I sent a letter confirming.

This was routine stuff, I’d get details of the case from the crown’s office, I’d meet with the client, and we would work out a strategy, perhaps agree to a temporary order or a permanent order with visiting rights. Or, who knows, we may oppose the application entirely. Much depended on how reasonable opposing counsel was, and on the attitude of the social workers involved.

A day before the scheduled hearing I got a call from a lawyer at the crown’s office, not the one I’d spoken to earlier. “You or your client must appear,” she said, or they would ask for an order in default. “You already agreed,” I said, “to the adjournment, you can’t very well change your mind now. “

“It wasn’t me,” she said, “we do work sharing, and there is no note on the file. Can you get your client to appear?” She must have been joking.

“Um, no. “ I said. “Not an option. And what you are doing, “ I said, “is unprofessional. You’ve already agreed, I don’t care what’s written in your damn file.”

She would not be moved and I was in a bind. What to do. I couldn’t reach the client and anyway he couldn’t be relied on. I couldn’t drop everything and spend a day driving to some town and back for a five minute court appearance. “DG,” I said, “what do I do.” “Call the duty counsel,” he suggested. Hmm.

Good idea. I managed to put the call through, “could you speak to the matter for me?” I asked. He was happy to oblige and the problem was solved. For now...

Well I fired off a letter to the crown that must have burned a hole through the postman’s bag. “Your position,” I wrote in what may have been my greatest moment in the practice of poisonous understatement, “comes perilously close to professional misconduct.” I ranted and I raved about professional honour and prejudice to parties to matters as serious as child apprehension, about lawyers with cavalier attitudes, about allowances for matters held in rural areas. In other words, I didn’t hold back. DG read the letter. “if anything, “ he said, “you’re letting them off too lightly.”

After a few days when the letter hit its target, I got a call from the crown. Before we take this any further, she said, you may want to investigate. I heard that your client died....

DG checked it out and it checked out. Poor guy kicked the bucket. For some reason I lost heart after that, didn’t pursue the bad guys in the crown’s office.

Too bad. They should have been strung up…

Lies My Sister Told Me...

Baby sisters are so wonderful, aren’t they? (Lies I Tell You, Lies)

Never one to accept a challenge, nevertheless I participate in this insanity. Things is, though, that I break the chain, and I am wholly unrepentant.

So, I hereby publish 5 statements, 1 of which is true, 4 of which are out and out lies. Figure out which is which:

1. I have a degree in engineering from the Sorbonne.
2. I have a haddock named Eric
3. I once had a lunch date with Marilyn Monroe
4. All my socks are blue
5. I have never kissed the editor of the Radio Times.

Valentine's Day, And The Story Of A Girl Whose Name Started With K

“It's crazy to me, all these folks wandering around out there in the world, aching for a connection, for some company, and yet pushing it away.” Wise words from my friend, when I told her about being turned down by a woman who’d given me her phone number a few days earlier. Ok, there was an age difference, but I didn’t call her up and ask her to marry me. “She missed the opportunity to have a lovely evening out,” said my friend, and I couldn’t argue. She did, didn’t she, I thought, a concert, classical music, dinner perhaps, some good conversation, nothing more.

At least she was honest with me, an attribute not to be taken for granted.

This is just post-Valentine’s Day reflections. I never understood Valentine’s Day, to be honest. One day of the year dedicated to romance? Shouldn’t committed couples have their own days? I mean, isn’t that what anniversaries are for? And only one day? And do you really want to share your day with everyone else in the world? But this year I actually went to a Valentine’s Day shindig, my excuse being that I am not in a committed relationship. It’s the first time I remember going to such an affair, and I went in disguise, like Cinderella…

As a teenager I wasn’t exactly a ladies man. I wanted so badly to be noticed, but the girls were not interested. I mean I did have some female friends, and they liked me well enough, but I was never convinced that they would have noticed had I been hit by a bus.

Girl 1: “so we haven’t seen that guy in a while.”
Girl 2: “I heard he got hit by a bus.”
Girl 1: “Not cool. So, we getting ice cream?”

But there was this one girl that had a crush on me. Let’s just call her Peggy Sue, after the Buddy Holly song. My best recollection is that I was in grade 11, about 17 then, and she was in grade 9, about 15. She wasn’t the prettiest girl in the room, nor the most shapely, and I wasn’t so interested in Peggy Sue. (cue the quote above). “She likes you,” said my friends, teasing me, when she approached me one evening at a school dance and tried to make casual conversation, which I resisted. “No she doesn’t” I said, “you think every girl who talks to me has a crush on me?” I challenged. My challenge was met with a counter-challenge: “How many girls talk to you exactly?” “Not the point,” I said, at which point the DJ cued Smokin’ In The Boys Room, a song I detested. “I hate this song” I said, just as Peggy Sue asked me if I would dance with her. Sure I said, let’s dance.

She gave up on me after that and when I thought about it years later I felt a bit bad. Maybe I should have given her a chance, got to know her a bit. Who knows? She may not have been as weird as she seemed. But I didn’t give myself the chance to find out. And anyway, maybe weird was okay…

I paid for it though. There was Marla, who dropped me like a hot potato when an old flame showed up, Anna, who asked me to take her home in the middle of our first (and only, obviously) date, Sherry, who got plenty comfortable with me in the back seat of the car that was driving us home from a retreat in the twin cities, then dropped out of sight once we got back to the city, Nora, whom I met in a foreign country, with whom I had 3 days to spend, and who, shall we say, drove me a bit crazy, all this before I was married, and I won’t go on more than that.

Yeah, so I guess it was Valentine’s Day got me thinking about all that, being at an organized event where people are supposed to meet people, all in pursuit of romance and connection. And with the music playing and some people dancing and some people sitting alone and wishing they were dancing, and some who were the life of the party and some who were wallflowers, it sure looked a lot like high school. I wasn’t fooled though. Wearing my disguise, and having learned the rules (one of which is that there are no rules), I made up my mind to have fun. And I think I succeeded. And that’s what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it?

---

Oh right, the girl whose name started with K? It was June of 1975, I was 18 and graduating, she was 16, a bit tomboyish, and we were sitting in the front seat of my mother’s 1969 Dodge Dart, and she wasn’t who I wanted to be with right then, but there wasn’t much I could do about it without breaking her heart in half. The car radio was on and this song came on, how ironic I thought, listening to the chorus. I’d never heard it before, but as I learned that evening, there’s a first time for everything…

Still Figuring Things Out

Is it about who you are or is it about who you want to be? There may not be all that much difference. Let me tell you a story:

There is a woman who I see on the bus most mornings. She is very short, just as wide, of indeterminate age, and obviously mentally handicapped. And one morning recently I was waiting for the people in front of me to leave the bus by the back exit, but nobody was moving. The woman was standing by the door, unable to move, and people became exasperated. And so they went around to the front door and exited that way. I came up behind the woman, who seemed to be afraid to step down, probably because the driver pulled up a bit farther from the curb than what she was used to, and I took her arm. She would not be moved. I slid past her, got off the bus, gave her my hand, and she took my hand, and I helped her down, and away she went without looking back.

And I wondered about all those people that went by her, and I guess most people don’t know what to do or how to help, or they don’t want to get involved or they don’t have time, and I admit that I felt good for helping her, and I wondered about that, maybe there’s something wrong with that, because my initial thought is that I didn’t do anything that anyone else wouldn’t do, but that so obviously was not the case. But then maybe I just want to be a hero.

And so I walked away from there feeling the hero, and that made me stop and ask myself what my motives really are. Do I help people because I’m that type of person, or do I help people because I want to be that type of person, or because I want to think of myself that way, or even because I want others to think of me that way?

Along comes Russ Harris to the rescue. Harris’ book is called The Happiness Trap, How to Stop Struggling And Start Living, and it’s a self-help book of a type I don’t usually read, but it was recommended to me by someone I was seeing professionally, someone who had some familiarity with my personal brand of mid-life crisis, and so I read it. And what it says is this: figure out what your values are. Write them down he says (I didn’t). Values, in this case, can be anything that serve as motivating factors – physical health, financial security, being emotionally connected to people around you – all examples of values in this scheme. So figure out what they are, he says, then take action in your life consistent with those values.

And so if “helping people when the opportunity arises” is a value, and I help the woman off the bus, then hey – mission accomplished. I’m hereby absolved of bad motives. I am working towards being the person I want to be, or to continue to be, and so what if I want everyone in the world to know what a hero I am. At least I’m happy.

And the woman got off the bus…

Vindicated

The meeting Wednesday night of the Writers Support Group started with the organizer, who is an editor / publisher when he’s not leading groups, reading a manuscript that he received two years ago from a hopeful fiction writer with impressive credentials. It was an example, he said, of work in the raw, unedited, unpublishable. Why, people wanted to know, after he’d read a few pages of turgid, clichéd, juvenile, downright embarrassing prose, did you bother with it.

We saw the story in it, he said. And so he and his partner worked with the author to fix up (“rewrite” I said, and he didn’t disagree) the work until it was something worth publishing.

I confess, I would have sent the author packing. I’d not make a successful publisher. I don’t care how good the story is. I’d have sent J. K. Rowling packing, and I’d have missed the book publishing deal of the decade. To me, for what it’s worth, it’s not about the story; it’s never about the story. To me, it’s about the telling. I don’t care if you give away the ending; it’s the journey I’m interested it, not the destination.

The story? Tell that to Hemingway.

“What’s your book about Mr. Hemingway?”
“A man goes fishing.”
“Well, thank you. Don’t call us etc.”

Think of Henry Miller, James Joyce. Does Tropic Of Cancer have a storyline? What about James Kelman? Sure, things happen, but it’s not much of a story, is it. But it’s still fascinating prose. And I happen to be reading, at this very moment, two novels. One is the aforesaid Rowling – yes I’ve finally taken it upon myself to read Harry Potter. At the same time I’m reading Normal Girl, Molly Jong-Fast’s first (and so far only) novel. Rowling has a story to tell, but I find myself caring less and less with each page I turn. Jong-Fast, though, doesn’t really have a storyline at all. She follows a few days in the life of a 19 year old female, spoiled, rich, Jewish, semi-celebrity coke addict, and she does it with such incredible power that I wish the book were longer that its 122 pages.

I have no quarrel, though, with anyone. I realize that literature and writing are very personal, and what’s country for one is jazz for another. The group is more story-oriented and that’s fine. But it made me a bit nervous to read my stuff, because there isn’t much story in my stuff. What I brought with me, it’s all about feeling, personality, the subtle tension that exists between two co-workers who are not exactly flirting and not exactly not flirting.

And so I took a deep breath, read the thing, and waited for the bombs to fall. But I already saw people smiling, laughing a bit even (at the funny parts, not at the piece itself) and when I was done what I got was compliments. And sure, one person mentioned the fact that the story didn’t “go anywhere” (fair enough, it didn’t). And someone took issue with my “he said she said” style, and I expected that, but even he was countered by someone who said that it worked in the context.

And I took another breath, and I was done. It was someone else’s turn. And I thought of the fiasco at the other group, trying to read to people who could not care less.

I just needed to find the right group.

See? It’s not about the story, it’s the telling…