From "Books Do Furnish a Room"

Monday, 23 March, 2009

Recently Read and Reading


1. "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts (Australian becomes armed robber to support heroin habit, is sent to jail for 20 years, escapes after 10, ends up in Bombay (Mumbai) where he opens a free medical clinic for the slum dwellers, and then ends up in the Bombay mafia, and that's only me halfway through the book.) - Page turner in the extreme. Loving it despite far too much purple prose. Turns out I'm not alone: Wikipedia claims that both Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp expressed interest in buying the book's rights to make it into a movie.

2. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving - finished it because Ai loved it and we usually have the same taste. Also, considered one of his best, and I had remembered really enjoying a few older Irving novels I read, and the movie version of "The Cider House Rules". Didn't love "Owen". Wasn't blown away by it. Not much more to say. I feel like I missed something. Also, and this might well be the main problem, it never went where I wanted it to go.


3. "Tokyo Fiancee" by Amelie Nothombe - Nothombe has style, and that's what I loved here, that and her accurate take on Japanese culture. Her ego and humor and depth of thinking is enough to get you through the book, but by the end I was tired of the writer's ego. (Still, I'd pick up another of her, like, 17 novels, or something ridiculous - Nothombe's only forty-something.)


4. "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" by Michael Chabon - This was Michael Chabon's first novel. I read this because I loved the movie of his second book "Wonder Boys," I thought "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" was great fun, and because though I didn't enjoy his last, "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" (sorry Dan) I hoped since "Mysteries" was Chabon's first novel it would have more heart and a little less clever. I couldn't even finish "Yiddish Policeman" because it was so clever, the whole thing just seemed like one big wink, a joke, a really great trick - but I'm not into 500 pages of clever. I need heart with my brain and I was hoping that going back to Chabon's first book I might find that. No such luck. Wicked talent for writing, great sentences, original, impressive, and an ideas guy extraordinaire - so inventive - but like the "Yiddish Policeman," I didn't buy into almost any of what was happening in "Mysteries". It was like, instead of being transported to Oz, I couldn't stop/help seeing the man behind the curtain.


[Desert Island #5, coming this week, is much heart and the masterful ability to cut down, to severly cut down on clever, to the point where it seems simple]

Saturday, 21 March, 2009

Writerly Quote of the Month


"Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."
-Sidonie Gabrielle



[pictured: Ernest Hemingway]

Thursday, 19 March, 2009

PROSE POEM

At Sea

Fire up that lamp, boy.
Good. Now look out the porthole and tell me what you see.
See, sir? It’s night. I see nothin but water.
You see water. Yes, boy. But tell me. How’s the water? How does she feel?
She . . . she feels calm, quiet.
She lulls us now, don’t she? But will she stay that way forever?
I dare think not, sir.
What’ll happen then, pray tell?
Soon enough will come a storm.
And she’ll get angry?
Aye, I think so, sir.
You know, son. Why though?
Why, sir?
Don’t think! Answer.
She’ll get angry because she has to.
Good. But why?
To sooth her soul.
Does the sea have a soul?
I think it does.
Then it does. Tell me, must all souls rage?
Aye, sir. I figure some nights they must.
Why must they?
I don’t know, sir.
Try.
Fear, sir?
Fear?
Fear of Death.
You think the sea is afraid of dyin?
No sir.
Why then does she rage so?
I don’t know, sir.
But you must.
Sir?
Why?
To settle my fear.
Are you afraid of the sea, sir?
Yes, boy. I fear it, I love it.
And it would help you, to know why?
Just tonight. I need an answer tonight.
But sir, what if I don’t have one? What then?
Imagine one. Please.
You want a fable.
A story, yes.
Shall I put out the lamp first?
Do.

Thursday, 12 March, 2009

SHORT STORY: Camp Charleston Part IV of IV

continued from part III, part II, and part I

He’d already taken off on his bike. Ray raised his eyebrows in sympathy. Then it was off on my bike after Daniel. He careered down through the open gate nearly running a pair of kids over before wiping out in a skid in front of the dining hall. He was crying when I got to him, a scraped knee, that slick wall of blood where skin should have been. When I got off my bike, Manny of the ponytail and biceps was taking his sweet fucking time coming over from the jungle gym.

“Daniel,” I asked, “are you ok?”

Daniel kept crying.

“Well,” I said. “That’s what happens when you break the rules like that.”

Manny had just approached when Daniel spit in my face. A hot gob of saliva was slowly sliding down my chin.

“Whoa,” was Manny’s helpful response.

I wiped the spit off with the back of my hard fist and was up quick. Daniel was up quicker and he was running, boy, for the life of him. He ran across the field toward the barn, didn’t make it halfway before I caught him, grabbed his one shoulder hard, pushing down so he knew not to run.

I held him, not gently. Took a deep breath. Took three more. Counted them.

Then I loosened my grip so it was hard but no longer dangerously so.

“Daniel, I want you to know I’m very angry right now. Do you know why?”

“Fuck you,” he said and spat again but his time, my adrenaline rushing, I moved in time.

I grabbed both Daniel’s arms and sat him down – hard – between my spread legs in the middle of the field. And believe me, this time I made damn sure to keep my own self leaned right back so he couldn’t backward head butt me. He didn’t try. There was only his short hard breaths and my short hard breaths and the fire that should have come out of us both.

I told him I was furious with him again. “So angry you wouldn’t believe.”

It went on for many silent minutes like that. Me holding him strong. He not fighting against me. I didn’t care. There was not a chance in hell I was letting go.

When finally somewhat calmer I asked him what the problem was he wouldn’t say.

“Did I do something to you?”

He shook his head.

“But you’re angry?”

He nodded.

“Well, if you talk maybe I can help you.”

He didn’t.

“Do you maybe want to stand up and go for a walk with me? Would that help?”

Daniel nodded.

“Can you stay calm?”

He nodded.

“Daniel?”

He said, “I can. Promise.”

I let go of his arms and we both stood up.

“But Daniel, I swear to God, if you even try –” He was off and running. He made it to the barn and ran round back of it, which was off limits. There was no fence dividing camp from forest back there. I wasn’t far behind though and Daniel had held up, standing by the barn wall. I stopped, allowing five feet between us. His personal space. I remembered.

“Daniel, this is serious,” I said shaking my head, noticing, peripherally, what looked like a broom handle up against the barn wall behind the kid. “We are off camp property right now. You better believe you’re gonna get a call home for this.”

“Fuck you,” he said. He turned from me, saw the broom handle; it all happened very quickly. When I tried to approach he swung at me. He kept swinging. Finally I went for it warning – yelling – that he better not hit me. He barely managed to swat my arm. I grabbed the stick, yanked it from him. I kept it behind me, squeezed tight in my hand. Daniel’s arms were swinging wildly when I came in at him. The back of his hand caught me in the face, my nose, this time making it bleed. I let go of him to raise my free hand to my nose. “Fuck!” Again he was off, this time running straight into the forest. I didn’t run after him. He could have run straight into the lake for all I cared. A long dark minute, maybe more, passed like that before I blew my whistle. Ray got there first. Randy Sue just seconds behind him.

Ray saw the blood coming down onto my lips. “Jesus Christ! What happened? Where’s Daniel?”

I punched the tin wall of the barn. Punched it so hard the whole thing bang-shuddered. “I can’t!” I said. “I can’t. I give up. I’m sorry, I give up.”

Ray was already running. Randy Sue carefully approached me and took the stick that was still in my one fist. “Go. Just go. Get out of here! We’ll find him.”

I started running; I had to get out of there, get off camp grounds if I was gonna cry. It had to come out because I really didn’t know if I could handle it, this job, this kid. And because if it didn’t come out that way, I could so easily have hurt a little boy. I made it out off camp, down the road to the tin of butts. I was doubled-over, sobbing like a baby, heaving like a child. It came out too uncontrollable, open, ugly. I hated myself for it, which made the sobbing all the worse. And still, through all the snot and the tears, I remember thinking so lucidly how remarkable it was that there were people who could help kids like this their whole lives. That there were careers like this. Because I wasn't halfway through the summer and believe me my tears were mostly about how ashamed I was with myself because if I made it through the summer - if I made it through - I knew I'd never do this again.

It was almost nine o'clock when he was finally found in the barn. Even Daniel Duchene didn’t want to be out in the forest alone when it got dark. I was called out of evening activity. Randy Sue was with Daniel in the barn. She was on a mat on the floor, the little blond boy in her lap. “Daniel has something to say to you. Don’t you, Daniel.”

He was red-eyed, post cry, his nostrils still flaring with each inhale. He could barely look at me; he looked at the ground when he said, “I’m sorry.”

I let out a breath. I said it was ok, that I was just glad he was ok.

Daniel gave a large yawn.

“I think someone’s had a very long day,” Randy Sue said. She walked with us back to the kid’s house. I waited in Daniel’s room while Randy Sue took him down the hall to brush his teeth and pee. He came back in his yellow pajamas. Like a little big bird.

Daniel climbed the fire engine red ladder up to his bunk, and Randy Sue went up to kiss him goodnight.

Standing in the doorway I said, “Goodnight, Daniel. I hope tomorrow is better, ok?”

Randy Sue walked towards me, to pass me, to leave. On her way out she quietly said to me, “I think you can handle this.”

I whispered a thank you, making it as warm and heartfelt-true as I knew.

The smile she left me with was more of a close-mouthed grimace.

“Benjamin?” Daniel called out to me, clearing his throat, as I watched Randy Sue walk down the hall.

“Yeah?”

“Is your nose ok?”

I moved in toward his bed, said I was fine. “I was just worried about you.”

Daniel cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I’m so crazy,” he said and cleared his throat again.

“You’re not crazy. Just … sometimes, difficult.”

“They call me Crazy Daniel at school.”

I closed my eyes for a long few seconds. I said, “That’s hard.”

He said, “It’s true. I am crazy.”

I said he wasn’t. I said he was the smartest kid I’d ever met.

“Do you hate me now like everyone else?”

“No! Not at all.”

I got in really close and I told him I had a secret. I told him that I loved him. And it surprised me when I said it, the way it just came out of me. Cause it was true.

I met Ashley up at the road after. She asked if Daniel was ok. Then she made a crack about my nose. I tried to smile. Then I lied and said I was just tired. I went back to my room wishing Randy Sue would be there. But of course I’d ruined that one.

Monday, 9 March, 2009

Dusk at Terroni, Ahhh Summer

Thursday, 5 March, 2009

SHORT STORY - Camp Charleston Part III (of IV)

continued from part II, and part I

The night before Daniel arrived Randy Sue had a private meeting with me over hot chocolates. It was long after dinner and the dining hall was empty, but because the cooks were still cleaning up in the kitchen, and because Randy Sue was under the illusion that there was someone at Camp Charleston who didn’t know we were fooling around, she was in professional mode, which didn't exactly bother me, and yet it also annoyed the shit out of me. We were at a table by the windows. It was dark outside so instead of lake we could only see our reflections. Randy Sue told me that because I was a little older, because she thought I could handle it, I was being assigned as Daniel’s one-on-one. He’d never had this before, no LD kid had.

"Why?” I asked.

"Because his mother died of a heart attack three months ago and Daniel thinks it was his fault. He’s not in good shape.”

"Wow," I said. "I mean, Jesus.”

D Day
A very small, very blonde ten-year old boy stepped out of a baby blue Dodge minivan on the pebbly road in front of the dining hall. He was wearing a red t-shirt, navy sweat shorts and had pulled his white tube socks up high. This was the little terror? This was Daniel Duchene?

I went up to him, put my hand out. “Hi Daniel, I’m Benjamin. I’m gonna be your counselor.”

Daniel shook my hand with his cold little hand, little boy fingers. “Hi,” he said in a small voice. He then cleared his throat, looked away. There was a slight rasp to his speech. He cleared his throat twice more.

"Why don’t we go over to your room? I’ll show you your bunk and you can meet the other guys; they’re already here.”

Daniel shrugged again, looked at the ground, kicked at it.

We spent the afternoon together, me and him. We hung out by the jungle gym. His three roommates were there too, but Daniel wasn't engaging with them yet. I have to say, I was finding him to be the model child, humble, shy, sweet.

Then we had our first meal together. It was at dinner that he broke out of his shell and became interested in finding a way to bond with the other boys. Halfway through the meal he suddenly, randomly, threw his fork down on the wood floor. His roommates found this very funny.

"Daniel! Pick that up.” I said.

Daniel was laughing with his suddenly made friends.

"Daniel!” I said.

He picked up the fork.

"Now you’re going to have to go get a clean one.”

"Fuck you,” he said, little boy voice gone Little Blonde Devil.

"What did you just say?”

"Sorry,” he said. “It’s a tick.”

And what was I gonna say? How could I know for sure?

How? Well, when it happened again at bed time, when I got a fuck you but only at the exact instant I moved to the door and turned the lights out in the boys’ room, when that happened so many times I ended up leaving at 11:00 instead of 9:30 (their bedtime), I was beginning to understand the challenge of Daniel Duchene.

It took just two of the longest working days of my young life (as in from 7am till 11pm) for me to learn to take him away from the group as soon as he misbehaved. Of course when I did that he raged. With Daniel being ten and thin and little, you’d think that restraining him would be easy. The first time actually went fine. I used the one-person restraint getting behind Daniel, crossing his arms and pulling them behind his back, and holding them there. I didn’t even have to hold him more than a minute or two. He calmed and promised to stay calm if I let him go. He even went to bed fairly easily that night. The second time, though, the next day, he didn’t calm so easily. Fortunately, with the one-person restraint, you can sit yourself and the child down, putting him, arms still locked behind his back, between your legs. Except there’s a cardinal rule and I forgot it: Hold the child’s wrists tight and don’t forget to lean your head back. Daniel gave me a pretty severe backward head butt to the nose. Somehow it didn’t bleed but my eyes got watery and it hurt like hell and never before had I felt such anger towards a child. The revenge instinct kicking in indiscriminately. Like it cared about the age of the fucker that had just bashed my nose in.

After I’d gotten Daniel to sleep, at 10:15, I found Randy Sue waiting for me in my room. Not minutes before, literally minutes, as I was making my way across the dark camp grounds from the kid's house to the speciality staff house, to my room, I’d been thinking of how much I wanted her to be there, but when I actually arrived and found her on my bed, flipping through my book (“The Sun Also Rises”) it bothered me. Still, I couldn't not go and sit with her, tell her what happened.

"Ohhh, sweetie!” she said, her voice getting higher, “Are you ok?” She started stroking my head. “Is there anything I can do?”

I said I was fine, ducking my head out and away from her stroking hand. “I just need some air.”

"I can come with you.”

"No! It's ok. I just–” I took a breath. “I just need a second alone. I'll be back in a sec.”

I didn’t mean to be gone so long. Ashley and a heavy girl named Mina, who had the kind of wicked sense of humor that was good for a laugh but bad for finding a mate (I think she scared them all away), had just happened to come up the road as I was finishing my first cigarette. I smoked two more with them and felt much better. They could laugh. Ashley certainly didn't need to get all gooshy-mushy when I told her what happened. It was very ‘Poor Benji Green’ but sarcastically, humorously, not so overly seriously.

Randy Sue was still in my room when I got back half an hour later. Now she was pissed. I was sorry. This time sorry wasn't enough, and I couldn't get over how ugly even the kindest girl got when she got mad. This was, I figured, a good time – a good reason (her overreacting) – to break up with her. It took over an hour to get it finished, which annoyed me because I'd wanted to try and find Ashley before bed.

It was almost midnight but Ashley’s light was still on, her door slightly open. She was sitting up against her vertically turned pillow. She had on a pair of oversized headphones that she slipped down round her neck when I came in.

"What’re you doing right now?”

She gave me a look. “Meditating.”

"Nice. You wanna go for a walk?”

You take a girl for a walk. You take her hand. If she lets you, then you know you can go for a kiss. I got the hand that signaled the kiss that came on the road by the can of butts. We stayed out late, standing out there on the dark road surrounded by black forest, kissing, touching warm and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.

The Bicycle Ride
It was the second of Daniel’s two weeks and life was good. Ashley Dunbar was my girlfriend; ok Randy Sue sort of hate-ignored hell out of Ashley (as did most of the rest of the females on staff), and Ashley worried that her future employment with the camp might be in jeopardy, but otherwise life was good. Sunday night Ashley and I went skinny dipping. A lived out fantasy, if you will. Getting to slip the white bathing suit off the lifeguard under a nearly full moon. Who gets to do that? We waited till we got back to her room to have sex. I want to stop now, finish here and say it was the best sex of my young life. It was not. It was self-conscious and awkward. Still, I was with the camp lifeguard. Isn’t that the dream?

The late night hurt the next morning but I wasn’t too worried. I was finally getting the hang of dealing with Daniel Duchene. The key was to keep him interested. With a brain like his, unless he was writing a doctoral dissertation or repelling down a skyscraper he was under-stimulated. With Ray’s help (the music instructor of the gypsy Johnny Depp hair, who was a camp verteran of five years) we had worked out a schedule where Daniel would come to the first fifteen minutes (if that) of whatever the group’s scheduled activity was, and after I’d take him off, whether to play on the swings, to draw, to do something.

There was a devil fighting inside Daniel. No one doubted that. But like all of us who fight with devils, there was also an angel in this little, very blonde boy. The angel, I learned, came out most on a bicycle.

We did just ten minutes of morning activity, not because Daniel acted up, he was actually being good, but because I was so anxious about the bike ride. I had permission to take Daniel down the road, off camp. Standard practice for bike rides. To go off camp. Ray said he had “complete faith” in me. I wasn’t so sure.

"Daniel, slow down. Slow down!” I said, “Bike beside me, ok?” I ruined the first ten minutes of the ride that way, only calming when I finally figured out that Daniel on a bicycle was like anyone on a bicycle. Lighter, happier. The wind was in our hair, the sun filtered down gentle-dappled through the canopy of trees overhead, and it was just awesome, riding fast, feeling free. At one point I gave a woo-hoo! And then smiled wide when Daniel did too.

For a while there was no need for conversation, riding in sync, in effortless rhythm with each other and the road. Daniel was eventually the first to speak.

"Benjamin?”

"How’s it going over there, Daniel?”

"I really love trees.”

"Oh yeah? Me too actually,” I said. “I’m a big fan.”

"But I get jealous of them in a way.”

"What do you mean?”

"They don't move.”

"That’s what you like about them?”

"I can’t do that. I can’t be still like that.”

I nodded because I didn’t want to lie to him. “But then,” I said, “trees can’t ride bikes, can they? What about that, Mr. Duchene?”

Daniel didn’t reply.

"Can I tell you something?” I asked. “Do you know that I see God in the trees?” I’d never told that to anyone. Mine the age when you can talk about blow jobs and sex but you’re too embarrassed to tell your friends you pray. I guess honesty breeds honesty. Daniel didn’t say anything for a while. He was just there, peddling away on his child-size bike. The sound of the wheels whirring, the smell of the maple trees.

Then, “Benjamin?”

"Yes, Daniel. You ok?”

"Don’t you think it’s ignorant for people to think that there isn’t life on other planets?”

This had to be the smartest kid I’d ever met.

We talked about alien life possibility. No, Daniel told. Ben the English major, he listened.

We rode out to where the pebble road ended, in a T, crossed by a much busier country road. There was not a chance I was going to let Daniel ride with the possibility of passing cars. “Daniel!” I yelled. “I asked you nicely. Get off your bike, please.”

We walked our bikes across the street. A few feet on there was a small bridge crossing a wide, gentle river. We stopped to look over, getting lost in the easy flow of the water. After, we both noticed, at our feet, millions of those propeller-like leaves. Muted green-yellow leaves that when dropped fluttered down like helicopter propellers. I showed this to Daniel and in doing got a glimpse of one joy a father gets. Like getting to be the one to share the “Catcher in the Rye” with your newly teenaged son. We proceeded to both drop helicopter leaves, one leaf at a time, watching them flutter down to rest on the slow moving river as mute-engrossed as two old friends sitting mesmerized by a fire.

The ride back to camp Daniel didn’t have any questions for me. I realized he hadn’t cleared his throat once the whole trip. Just the trees, the wind in the trees. That’s all we needed. I decided Daniel deserved a treat. I’d buy him an ice cream sandwich from the Tuck shop, or whatever he preferred.

Ray was out on the road smoking as we came up. “Well, well,” he said, after quickly hiding his cigarette behind his back. “If it isn’t Benjamin Green and Daniel Duchene, for sure two of the coolest cats on campus.”

"Fuck you,” was Daniel’s reply. That’s all it took. Like the ride had never happened. Like God had left the trees.

"Daniel,” I said.

He’d already taken off on his bike.

Next: Part IV (the final chapter)

Blue sky, nothin but blue sky

Wednesday, 4 March, 2009

Word Play

Wordy nerdy kid goes to Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), finds painting he likes, describes what he sees.

Jack Chambers' "401 Towards London No. 1" (1968-69)
A single truck travels down an otherwise empty highway in broad daylight. There are no other vehicles in either direction. The open road - is that already so dated? To think a road could be that open, that optimistic. The truck is small relative to the length of highway, a clean, four lane freeway, gently winding off into the distance. The highway, as it was then, a brief break, just a couple thin strips of grey between gently rolling fields of yellowing green extending out east and west. The expansive green fields themselves are dwarfed by a sky so big you see that the earth is small and that people don't even much matter, a sky that had earlier that day been all blue but that is now being slowly taken over by big fluffy white clouds.

You think, this is Canada.

Tomorrow: Camp Charleston Part III

Sunday, 1 March, 2009

Hammock View of the Atlanta hotel pool area in Bangkok, Thailand, fan room $15, A/C room $18



Why this free little advertisement for the Atlanta? Cause I love the hotel. Cause it's fucking freezing in Canada. And because a boy can dream, can't he?
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