E. B. White Day One

It's a gloomy wet Saturday morning. I won't go to the market in the rain; it'll be swamped anyway by the Thanksgiving hordes, whereas we will be celebrating a week late. My kids and grandkids are in B. C. Yesterday my ex Edgar sent me fantastic shots and film of Eli and Sam visiting Edgar's youngest brother Roger's business - he sells huge farm and construction equipment throughout B. C., and Eli got to stand in the shovel of a backhoe and ride in a tractor. The most thrilling experience for a small boy - and perhaps big ones too.

So no Thanksgiving for me this weekend, which is great, as I have work to do, movies to see, a house to figure out now that I'm not going to be ripping it apart. Life is good.

Last night, before Bill Maher's show - which was of course about Kavanaugh and Trump's lies about his fortune and all that disgusting stuff - I spent a glorious hour transcribing the passages I liked most in One Man's Meat, the E. B. White book of essays. His understated, wry tone is delightful, his rhythms, precise vocabulary, everything - this is how I want to write. So I've decided, as winter hovers in the distance and the world falls apart - a fresh new Fascist looming in Brazil - to share his work with you. This week I'll post a passage a day to bring you joy. I hope you enjoy this man's work as much as I do. Happy Thanksgiving.

Since I posted a passage yesterday, I'll post the rest of it today, and continue with others tomorrow.

June 1941

… glad to be visiting the old Herrick place, which is remote and quiet - an old tumbledown barn in a run-out field encircled by woods and overlooking a small secluded cove. Lilacs were in bloom by the old cellar hole, and a few old apple trees stood guard over the secrets of other days. The world stood still here in this peaceful and mysterious place, which seemed perfect for a tryst or a double suicide … 

I thought how pleasant it would be to start life fresh on the old Herrick place, with a one-room shack and no appurtenances – no equipment, no stock, no pets, no family responsibilities, no program. But knowing myself as well as I do, I well know that it wouldn’t be twenty minutes before I would acquire or contrive something to establish the roots of complexity in firm soil – a cold chisel perhaps, or an inamorata, or a folding towel rack. In no time at all I would destroy the old Herrick place by setting out a pansy plant or repairing a rotten sill. And then it would be just like any other spot – beloved but not removed. A man sometimes gets homesick for the loneliness that he has at one time or another experienced in his life and that is a part of all life in some degree, and sometimes a secluded and half-mournful yet beautiful place will suddenly revive the sensation of pain and melancholy and unfulfillment that are associated with that loneliness, and will make him want to seize it and recapture it; but I know with me it is a passing want and not to be compared with my taste for domesticity, which is most of the time so strong as to be overpowering.

waiting for the wine fly

What to say about the debacle south of the border? What kind of woman would vote for that man? Well, we know the answer, that's easy - a Republican woman whose loyalty to her party is stronger than her loyalty to half the planet.

Makes me heartsick, but then, there's so much else to decry, including what's going on in my own province. So let's move along, because beating the breast does no good. Though here's a tiny bit more breast-beating: Wayson just read a few pages of the memoir, the ones I thought I'd fixed, and told me it's slow and passive, not active, that as always I am summarizing, not writing vividly. He read some of the later section, which I know works, and loved it. The beginning still does not work. Is it time to give up yet?

Yesterday was hot but today it's chilly, the furnace is on, and I've pulled out the cucumber plants and the kale (which was a waste of space, I hardly ate any kale; I love vegetables but just cannot find much to like about kale.) "Get flu shot" is on my list of things to do, along with "See A Star is Born, Fahrenheit 11/9 and The Wife." Got to get caught up on my movies - so many good ones to see and more coming along, not to mention documentaries.

My children are in B.C. for their grandmother's funeral, and my brother and the doctor at her facility think my aunt too is on her way out. She told her friend May, who was visiting yesterday, that she wants to die. It's horrible to be so helpless, to not know how to make things better for her. My brother and her friends are doing their best, and I am monitoring from here, feeling terrible and mourning.

What can I say that's cheerful? Had a wonderful class at U of T yesterday and at home last evening. And I'm reading E.B. White's One Man's Meat; he is so wise and funny, such a beautiful writer, it's like a cool, calm hand on a fevered brow to read his words. Here is a tiny bit which is well-known:
When a glass of wine is poured a wine fly appears promptly - but I never see him at any other time and wonder where he keeps himself in the meanwhile and what he does for a drink. 

Here he is describing "an old tumbledown barn in a run-out field encircled by woods and overlooking a small secluded cove. Lilacs were in bloom by the old cellar hole, and a few old apple trees stood guard over the secrets of other days. The world stood still here in this peaceful and mysterious place, which seemed perfect for a tryst or a double suicide."

Who else can jolt you from complacency like that? The world needs more E.B. White. And I need to pour a glass of wine and wait for the fly.

The Robert Handforth Theatre Archives at Carleton

Ryerson last night - seventeen writers eager to tell their stories. How lucky I am. U of T starting Thursday afternoon, the perfect size so far at twelve, and Thursday night, my home class. I will be stuffed with stories.

Yesterday a box I've had in my basement since 1989, containing theatre memorabilia belonging to my beloved friend Robert Handforth, went off to Carleton University, to establish an archive in his name. Bob died of AIDS in 1988 or 89, and his belongings were divided amongst his friends; his theatre stuff came to me. It's a fascinating jumble of his notes on productions as writer, director, or critic, his design notes, because he was a talented designer too, his own scripts, and those of his colleagues and friends. I went through the box one last time before it vanished, and found a file about a production of John Lennon's "In His Own Write" in 1979 which Bob directed and I appeared in, of which I have absolutely no memory. Was it the drugs? The reviews were glowing.

It was wonderful to see again Bob's familiar handwriting, fluid loops in brown ink. He taught me so much about beauty. He cared so much about beauty, about the theatre and the arts in general, about his friends. It made me sad to see him go, but I'm glad he'll be permanently settled at Carleton, where he and I and Lynn and Suzette and many others began their theatre careers, and from which we all graduated.

So - this blessed renovation. I've just calculated, wincing and gritting my teeth, that I've spent more than $8500 on a renovation that is going nowhere. However. Since it's already paid for, we will go through with the permit application, so I'll have the option of doing the reno in the future. For now, a new plan, to use my top floor as a casual airbnb-type temporary dwelling for out of town friends and students. If you need a place in downtown Toronto to rest your head for a night or two, have I got an attic room for you! And if possible, I will increase the size of the basement suite, which will bring in more income without much expense. Or disruption. Painful, all this - but better to stop work now than go through with something that fills my heart with dread.

Mind you, it's because of the impending reno that I started to clear out the basement, including finally dealing with Robert's stuff. That's the good news. Much more to be done, reno or no.

Tomorrow most of my immediate family, Anna and the boys and Sam, are flying to Vernon for the funeral of their grandmother. It will be a grand family reunion, if for a sad purpose - my ex has three remaining brothers who have a bunch of grandchildren, so many B. C. cousins for my kids and grandkids. If there's one thing Anna loves, for herself and her sons, it's cousins.

"Egypt Station" and "Colette" - divine

Many enormous pleasures today. I should feel guilty about enjoying anything as our world crumbles, but what the hell, what good would being miserable do? So - pleasure.

The market this morning - honeycrisp apples, sourdough bread, the first tomatoes I've had to buy all summer. A sunny day, glorious. The gardenia is going crazy, as if she doesn't know the end is nigh, and soon she'll be coming in for six months.

Jean-Marc came over to discuss my options in the house and had some good ideas which I'll consider. What matters: options.

Walked downtown late afternoon. My goal was to buy the new Macca CD, Egypt Station, which, he announced at his concert in Montreal, was then and maybe is still #1 in Canada. I had to Google record stores - there used to be loads and now they're rare. But I found one on the way to my date - Dead Dog Records on Church Street. The CD was sold out! So I had - with great joy - to buy the record. The LP. This is the first time I've bought a new LP in decades. I'm listening to it now. Talk about sense memory - slitting open the plastic, withdrawing the big black disc, placing it carefully on the turntable, blowing dust away from the needle - and there, that beloved voice.

As the review in Rolling Stone said, "Make a list of all the songwriters who were composing great tunes in 1958. Now make an overlapping list of the ones who are still writing brilliant songs in 2018. Your list reads: Paul McCartney. Sixty years after “Love Me Do,” his legend already inviolable, Macca keeps adding new gems to his songbook, with nothing to prove except he’s the only genius who can do this."

Even the very young woman behind the Dead Dog cash register - or the debit machine, anyway - told me she was impressed by this record. As am I. No surprise there. It's not just a wonderful album, it's a brand new shiny record on my turntable, just like the very first in 1964!

And then off into the sunshine, walking downtown for a bite to eat with Ken, getting caught up, and off together to see the film 'Colette.'

Another enormous treat - a wonderful film. Of course Colette is one of my heroes - I've had a framed photo of her in my office for many years, looking expectantly, with a touch of impatience, at me. "Get on with it," she's saying. Such a brilliant writer, with an encyclopedic knowledge of nature and of human feeling and experience. But the film shows what an extraordinary woman she was, so many years ahead of her time, bisexual, flamboyant, fearless. It also makes us understand how very free the French are sexually in a way that would be unthinkable in any other culture - the kind of freedom Colette and her husband Willy allowed each other and took for granted.

The notebooks. Sitting by the hour writing in her notebooks. A film about the early career of a writer who became so famous and beloved, she was given a state funeral despite her scandalous life. A film about Paris and writing, two of my favourite things on the planet, with Ken, a dear friend, and then home to listen to Macca. Does a day get better than that?

the confirmation hearings and I, screeching to a halt

I keep clicking on the NYTimes to see what's happening now, as it changes minute to minute. We are watching a country tearing itself apart. I can only imagine what amusement Putin is getting out of this. For awhile the fate of the country, maybe the world, rested on the slim shoulders of Jeff Flake. Who came through, sort of. Bring on the FBI.

What a magnificent woman CBF is, to get through that experience with such grace. I don't diss her, as some are, for being so polite. Thank God for politeness. I could not watch the disgusting spectacle later in the day. Ye gods. What a melodrama for our times.

In the meantime, my own drama. Today an engineer came to let me and Jean-Marc, the renovation project manager, know what would be needed to hold up a new apartment on the second and third floor. A lot, it turns out, because, as I've known since we bought this place, the original work done here was not done properly and so, much needs to be fixed. Three beams would have to be put in from the third floor to the basement, which would entail ripping out my living room walls and much of the basement. This, besides completely decimating the second floor and most of the third. I'd planned to live on the main floor through the process, but obviously this would be impossible; JM told me I should live somewhere else for perhaps six weeks, and my downstairs tenant would have to move as well, because the electricity and plumbing would sometimes be shut off.

I cried Uncle. Enough! But what choice did I have - either sell this house and move to a condo or go through this excruciating renovation? I'm just not ready to move. Yet.

And then JM blew my tiny mind. "You have a third option," he said. "Don't do anything."
My jaw dropped.
"Keep living here just as you are," he said, the words that changed my life. For now, anyway.

It's funny how you get locked into a pattern and cannot see any more where you are or what you need. But of course. I was building the reno because I live in a big house and wanted to share my space, but not with a tenant like I've had before who'd use my kitchen and my shower. I don't need rental income while I have teaching income; the reno would be so expensive, it would be years before the loan would be paid off and there'd be income anyway. It was mostly to use space that's not being used. I was going to shield my privacy from the tenant by creating her own space.

But what if I simply do not have a tenant? Leave the room for occasional rentals and friends? For awhile, anyway?

"But," I said to JM, "there's a housing shortage in Toronto. I wanted to create housing for someone."
"You don't need to take that on," he said. "You do enough."

I will pay thousands to various people, including today's engineer, for work done to no avail, but I will not have to go through that horrible experience. At least yet - I'll give myself five years. In the meantime, new condos will be going up on Gerrard; maybe I'll find something close by that I like, and it'll be time for the big shift.

In the meantime - I'm right here, in my kitchen, where I belong.