From Word To Word

Dave Humphrey gave me a book a month or so ago, a collection of pages really, a printout of a pdf  document.  It was a novel, written by Robin Sloan and entitled Annabel Scheme.  Dave passed the book to me, he said, because it had been published in an interesting way, where the author had solicited people, a posse of patrons as he calls them, to sponsor the project in return for a copy of the book when it was completed.  This idea intrigued me, and I put the pile of pages on my desk to await a more or less quiet afternoon, which finally happened yesterday.

Sloan describes the novel as “Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century”, but I am not sure this accurately describes the sense of the book for me.  It feels like a less drug-induced Philip K. Dick mashed with a more tech-savy Douglas Adams and a more playful William Gibson, all writing of a world with demon-possessed computers and ghosts using electric lines as an internet to haunt the living.  The paranormal is mixed liberally with the technological, and both are infused with a mischievous and affectionate satire of google, hard-boiled detective novels, start-up culture, urban ghost stories, and sundry other things.  It may not be great literature, but it is certainly good entertainment.

The story moves quickly and directly with a minimum of description and introspection.  In some places it reads almost like a more fully realized film script rather than a novel, but this feels like a strength rather than a fault because the tone and the narrative arc proceed in similarly easy ways.  The accomplishment of the novel, I think, is that it can move at this pace and still comment interestingly on the almost mystical ways that our culture relates to its technology.  It manages both to be an entertainment and a playful reflection on the gods and the ghosts in our machines.

All this is encouraging to me, because it is an example of  an alternative publishing model that has been largely successful in achieving its admittedly limited goals.  Though the model is still unable to provide a sufficient living for the author, it is perhaps a movement in that direction as it reimagines patronage apart from wealthy benefactors or corporate sponsors or government grants, where people can come together to support the kind of writing and music and art that is most meaningful to them.  I am interested to see if Sloan, or someone else for that matter, will be able to push the model further, to make the posse of patrons a means through which our increasingly virtual communities are able to choose and support adequately the artists that will define and represent them.

I was on course in Toronto last week, and I was amusing myself by writing short character sketches of the people presenting in class.  This is something I often do to pass the time, and I thought I might share a few.  As a point of clarification, the fact that most of the sketches are of women has nothing to do with my preference for subjects and everything to do with the fact that women vastly outnumber men among social workers.

~ ~ ~

She stands with her shoulders high, protective, as if she has been fearing something for so long that her body knows only to be fearful.  She is protecting her beauty, I think, because it frightens her, because she is not sure of what it means.

~ ~ ~

She wears brightness at her wrists, and her hands flutter about her face like the wings of birds.  She holds herself in her hands.  She dresses her hands in brightness because this is where she knows herself most fully.

~ ~ ~

He is a memory of himself, of a former time, when he was as strong as he wanted to be, stronger than he is now, remembering.  He is a yearning for another self, a yearning out of time.

~ ~ ~

She is tall already, and thin, and angular, and she pivots her still taller heels, making deep but ephemeral divots in the carpeted floor.  She turns herself around these points, swivels, like a spotlight, brings herself to bear on everything in its turn, brings her sharp hips and her sharp jaw to bear, fixing everything in its place.

~ ~ ~

Her lips are pursed, and her head cocks from one side to the other, like a chicken, plump, abrupt, wary, and awkward.  She leads with her head and chest and belly.  Her arms and legs trail behind behind her, afterthoughts, appendages, the tentacles of a jellyfish.

~ ~ ~

She is freckled browns and bronzes and greens.  She is like fall leaves, like sun-speckled through fall leaves.  She is autumnal, brightly and frivolously autumnal.

~ ~ ~

She plants her tall boots, her tall black boots, shoulder width apart, giving the lie to her pretty patterned skirt and her ponytail.  She is stronger than she wants to be, than she wants others to know, than she thinks a woman should be.

~ ~ ~

She is round-hipped and round-breasted, maternal and libidinal: a body that is before all else an embrace.

~ ~ ~

She is affably porcine, a well-groomed and well-trained sow, something to be shown at the fair.  She is a sow in pleated pants and thick glasses and bobbed red hair.

~ ~ ~

She has a sadness in her mouth, a sadness rounded into itself, a sadness closely held.  There is a beauty in her sadness, though, a real beauty, a beauty of dark eyes and full mouth and small breasts and round thighs.  It is in her sadness that she finds her beauty.

I have just had another request for my Bev Stroganov recipe, so rather than keep writing it for people individually, I thought I might just post it here where I can direct people as I have need.  This is one of those recipes that I first made when I still lived in my parents’ home and have been experimenting ever since.  I very rarely make it exactly the same twice, but the following is the gist of the dish.

Bev Stroganov

Make a paste with three tablespoons of ground mustard, three or more teaspoons of ground pepper, two teaspoons of sugar, a pinch of salt, and a little water.  The paste should be wet enough that it is smooth but dry enough not to be runny.  You can experiment with different varieties of mustard here, but I would recommend that you use preground mustard or use an electric grinder rather than a mortar and pestle for your whole mustard, just to be sure the mustard is ground finely enough to make a good paste.  Let this paste rest at room temperature.

Thinly slice four or five cups of yellow onions into rings.  Thinly slice a pound or so of mushrooms.  I use brown mushrooms most often, but I have used shitake and oyster mushrooms also, so experiment as you like.

Take a two or three pound fillet of beef.  Cut it first across the fillet into rounds that are about a quarter inch thick.  Then cut each round into quarter inch strips, this time cutting with the grain.  This process will make strips of beef that will be tender and easy to chew.  If you cut the stripe so that they go with the grain with both cuts, you will just get long bits of whole muscle that will be much less tender.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in a heavy skillet over very high heat.  Wait until the oil begins to haze over the pan.  Add the mushrooms and onions, then immediately reduce the heat to low.  Cook for twenty or thirty minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetable have softened, then drain them through a sieve and set aside.

Heat two or three more tablespoons of oil in the skillet over high heat until the oil is hor but not smoking.  Add just enough meat to cover the bottom of the skillet and brown it, then transfer the meat to a bowl and set it aside.  Repeat this process until all the meat has been browned.  Stir in the mustard paste.  When it is well combined, stir in four cups of sour cream.  Cover the mixture and cook until the sauce is well heated.  Taste the mixture and add mustard, salt, and pepper as necessary.

Serve over egg noodles or, if you want to be a little more authentic, over thinly sliced and very crisp French fried potatoes.

Next Saturday, March 13th, our Dinner and a Doc film will be Arnold Shapiro’s Scared Straight, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 1978.  The film follows seventeen young offenders as they are taken to Rahway maximum Security prison in New Jersey where some of the inmates give them a raw introduction to what prison life actually entails.  The experiment so effectively shocked the offenders that the film spawned many similar programs, though there is some controversy as to whether they actually reduce repeat offenses.

Further information can be found in an interview with Karl Shapiro by Kristen Kidder, in this clip from the original film, and in this school version of the twenty year follow up film.

The soup that night will be Cauliflower and Sorrel Soup, a Gordon Ramsay recipe, though I will be omitting the optional caviar as it is a bit beyond my budget.

The event will be at my place, 130 Dublin Street, Guelph, and all are welcome, though the film contains a good deal of profanity, so this may not be a great night to bring your kids.  We will eat at about 5:30 and begin the film at about 6:00.  As usual, I would appreciate an email or a comment to let me know that you will be coming.

Also, here are some of the upcoming films we will be showing:

April 10th – Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov
May 8th – The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris
June 12th – Kordavision by Hector Cruz Sandoval

I have a suspicion that this piece would benefit from some introduction, but I am unsure that I can give it, so I guess you will just need to make of it what you can.

Hurtling

So, we’re on this train, and we’re hurtling along.  Actually, let me interrupt.  I hope you don’t mind that I’m using the word ‘hurtling’ here.  It’s too obvious a word, I know. It’s the sort of word people are always using to describe a train.  They might say ‘chugging’ instead, or maybe ’steaming’, but we’re talking about a diesel locomotive here, so most would just say ‘hurtling’ or something equally unoriginal.  What I like about the word ‘hurtle’, though, even if it lacks imagination, is that you can make it sound like a train running over the railroad ties.  You just need to put the emphasis on the second syllable.  You know, “hur-TEL, hur-TEL, hur-TEL.”  Say it a few times.  You’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, like I said, we’re hurtling along to the city.  That’s where we’re going, whether we want to or not. This is also why I think ‘hurtling’ is a good word, because it says to me that the train is out of control, which is true.  Not that someone isn’t in control of it, I hope, but it’s certainly out of my control.  Out of our control.  We’re going to the city, and there’s nothing we can do it about, assuming that we wanted to do something, though I’m not sure we do.  Trains always hurtle like this.  You never have any control over them.  Once you get on, you have to wait until they stop.  You don’t get a brake or a steering wheel.  You don’t get a chance to turn around or take the next exit or choose a different destination.  Trains just hurtle, and so we’re hurtling.

This is what I like about the train, now that I think about it.  You never have to decide what turn to take.  You never have to watch for an exit.  You never even have to pull a cord when it’s your stop.  You just get on or not, and when the train stops, you get off or not.  The rest is just being, just being on a train, letting it go where it’s going, letting it fulfill its destiny.  The rest is just hur-TEL, hur-TEL, hur-TEL.

Okay, I know this story isn’t getting anywhere very quickly.  I’ll try to stay on subject from here on in, I promise.  So, where was I?  Right.  We’re still on this train, just being on the train, and it is, should I say it again, hurtling toward the city, whether we like it or not, and we’re cut off from everything outside us.  We’re cut off by our speed, I think, and by our destination.

Of course, I should be careful of saying ‘our’ like this, careful of saying ‘we’, though I don’t know what to say instead.  There aren’t any better words I don’t think, but we should still be careful, because there isn’t really any ‘we’, and there isn’t really any ‘our’.  We’re as cut off from each other as we’re cut off from everything else.  The train hurtles, and we hurtle too. We have our own velocities, our own destinations.  We can’t turn to the right or the left.  There’s no exit for us to take.  We just hurtle.

I’m sorry for talking in metaphors like this.  I’m sure it’s only boring you.  I’m not at all saying that you’re like a train or even that you’re hurtling like a train, whatever that might mean.  I don’t know myself.  Actually, now that I’ve said it once, maybe you are like a train.  Just a little.  But I’m not very attached to the idea, so you can take it or leave it, whatever you like.

What I really mean to say is that there isn’t any ‘we’ here on the train.  No, that’s not even quite right.  What I really mean to say is that whatever ‘we’ there is here doesn’t mean much.  We’re only a ‘we’ because all of us are sitting here, just being on the train, all listening to the hur-TEL, hur-TEL, hur-TEL.  That’s our only ‘we’.

Except for our cellphones and laptops, of course.  These make a ‘we’ of sorts.  They keep us from being cut off by the train, more or less, in their way, don’t they?  Or maybe they don’t.  I don’t know.  Maybe they’re only looking for a ‘we’ that they never manage to find.  And maybe, though I said I wouldn’t talk like this any more, maybe we’re all hurtling along, hur-TEL, hur-TEL, hur-TEL, and calling from out of our velocities, our destinations, trying to make a ‘we’, creating the illusion of a ‘we’.  At least, that’s the sort of thing I might say if I thought it would interest you, which I’m sure it doesn’t.

You’d probably much rather I just went on with the story about the train.  I can understand that.  I’d want the same, if I were you.  I’d want to hear about where this train is going.  Actually, I was just about to say, “I’d want to hear about where this train is hurtling,” only you’re likely tired of the word ‘hurtling’ by this point.  Even I’m getting tired of it, but it’s hard to give up on a word once you’ve started with it, and I have a lot invested in this word by now, so we’ll both have to live with it.  I can’t avoid the sound anyway, not here.  It’s just hurt-TEL, hur-TEL, hur-TEL.  Hurtle, hurtle, hurtle.  There’s no escaping it.

In fact, I’m not sure that anything else about this story even matters.  If it does, and it might, for all I know, I certainly can’t tell it anymore.  Not with that sound in my ears: hur-TEL, hur-TEL, hur-TEL.  Hurtling.

Every morning that I take my eldest son to Montessori school, two days a week, he gives me a singular farewell.  He first asks, with much gravity, when I will come to pick him up.  Once I have answered this question, he makes me kneel down to his level, and he takes my face between his hands, and he kisses me solemly on the forehead, like some ancient elder imparting a blessing, and each time he does this I am reminded of how blessed I am.  Each time, I am surprised once more at how good it is for my soul that I am made to kneel and receive on my forehead the blessing of his kiss.

It was a cold, cloudy, sleety day today, one of those days that will consent neither to be truly nice nor to be truly horrible, settling for meteorological mediocrity, which is the worst of all weather.

I decided that the day called for nesting. The kids and I made a pact not to leave the house for anything short of an emergency. We made hot chocolate. We brought our blankets down to the livingroom and watched a movie. We made a tent around one of the radiators and read some stories. We nested.

It reminded me of what Gaston Bachelard has to say about nests in The Poetics of Space.  With nests, he says, “we place ourselves at the origin of confidence in the world; we receive a beginning of confidence, an urge toward cosmic confidence.”  It was just this confidence that we built today in the face of a February day in Canada: the confidence of the nest.

I just thought that I should write and express my deep relief that Canada has been winning a few more medals lately. There were a few days there when I was deciding whether to move to the United States, or maybe to Germany, because their much higher medal counts were clearly indicative of an essentially superior way of life. Sure, I thought, we have universal health care; sure, we have a standard of living that consistently ranks among the highest in the world; but what good are these things without Olympic medals. A good country, a really good country, it has Olympic medals, lots of them. This is how you know the good countries from the bad ones.

So I am feeling a little better now that our medal total is growing. Now our ambassadors and peacekeepers and tourists can go to other places in the world without feeling deep shame for the next four years, especially if we win Gold in men’s hockey, which would make our foreign policy so much simpler, at least until the next Olympics. I mean, who is really going to have the guts to stand up against the reigning Olympic Ice Hockey Champions, both men and women. Nobody. We could probably finish up with the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq in a few days, maybe even throw in Israel and Palestine for good measure. I just hope the men do win, for the sake of world peace I mean.

This is why I am so glad that I live in a country that has spent, oh, something like 10 or 12 billion dollars to bring the Olympic Games home, and I am honoured to pay my part of the 3 to 6 billion dollars of the total that will have to come from the tax payers. Honestly, what better way could there have been to spend that money than on the purity of sport and the honour of Canada and the peace of the world? Sure, I know that the whole thing looks like it is driven by advertizing dollars and national hubris, but the essential ideals make it all worthwhile, in the end, I swear.

This coming Monday, March 1st, Michael Hardt will be giving the School of English and Theatre Studies and The TransCanada Institute’s annual lecture at the University of Guelph.  Hardt is a political theorist who has collaborated with Antonio Negri to write several very interesting books, including Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.  The lecture should be well worth your time, though I will not be able to attend it myself, unfortunately.   Details can be found on the University of Guelph Campuis Events Site.

I wrote last week about making a seed table, and I must admit that the post did deem to imply that I was starting tomatoes in my seed table as of this past weekend, which horrified several of my gardening friends.  Now, I am ne wto the gardening game, but even I know that it is still early for tomatoes, and I plan to plant red peppers in two weeks or so and then tomatoes one or two weeks after that.  Though it was the tomatoes that made the table snecessary, the seeds that I put in the dirt this past weekend were of a very different sort.  They were the tree seeds that I had been stratifying in the refridgerator this winter, and they were technically no longer even seeds.

This was the reason, actually, for my hurry in making the table in the first place.  I had not expected to need the tables for a week or two yet, but I went last week to check the moisture levels of my stratifying seeds and discovered that they had all germinated, every one of them.  I no longer had little bags of dirt and hibernating seeds.  I had little bags of dirt and tangled masses of germinated seedlings, all pale and straggly and searching for light.  So, my first task was to build the table a little ahead of schedule, and my second task, accomplished this past Saturday, was to detangle and plant in seed trays the still very delicate seedlings.

The plum and cherry plants were fairly simple.  There were fewer of them, and they were stronger, and only a few of them had germinated in the first place.  The roses were a little more difficult, but there were still only a couple of dozen of them, so I planted them out without too  much trouble.  The Saskatoon seedlings, however, were a nightmare.  There were something like a hundred of them, all very delicate, and all woven together like a mat.  I was forced to pick through them one by one and to use a toothpick to help place them in the soil without breaking their roots.  This is definitely not how the manuals recommend that you plant seeds, and after several hours of tedium I would also second their judgment, but the results seem good.  I had relatively few of the seedlings die off from shock or breakage, and the cherries and plums are responding very quickly to the light.  It was good just to see the rows of little plants, and I was motivated to plant several trays of perennial herbs that can stay in the table until spring.

As our first real snowstorm of the year rolled in yesterday, it was good to have a little bit of spring growing in my basement.