August 29, 2007

Senseless destruction

Disemboweled remains of a book were spotted on the corner of Harbord and Spadina this morning, torn pages blowing in the breeze. A thorough investigation managed to retrieve the book’s title and copyright page at the scene, identifying said book as The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper by Douglas Fetherling, published in Toronto by Oxford University Press in 1990. Witnesses to the aftermath of this violence reported being “sickened” by the senseless destruction, the book evidently torn to pieces in a fit of rage, page by page stripped from the spine. Front and back covers could not be found. The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper will probably be missed by Neil Reynolds, to whom its dedication page was inscribed.

August 24, 2007

Footprints

Oh, I do wonder. About my houseguest who comes from a culture in which bathing is a sacred ritual. Who comes from a culture in which the body is scrubbed clean before one steps into the bath water. Oh, I do wonder. About my houseguest. About what she must have thought this morning. What must she have thought about the footprints in my tub?

August 23, 2007

Shoes off in the house

The arrival of Sayaka, our Japanese houseguest (via Vancouver), has put me back in mind of those little cultural quirks we all possess and would never even notice were it not for someone different to reflect them back to us. Sayaka has been kind enough to keep my reflections to herself today, but I’ve been reminded of back when Stuart and I first met, and I would tell him to just leave his shoes at the door when he came over. And of course I’d take off my shoes when I went to his house, and it was only when his demonic landlady finally blew her top that I realized that my behaviour was considered strange. Not only was she fed up with tripping over my shoes inside her door, but she thought that I took them off in the first place was just bizarre. Stuart admitted he did find it a bit weird when I made him deshoe at my place, but as it was one of a million things he found a bit weird about me, he hadn’t mentioned it. But yeah, now that I mentioned it– English people don’t take off their shoes in their houses!! It never even occurred to me, and I think it’s only a Canadian thing due to climate. Let me tell you though, when we moved to Japan I definitely felt a little cultural affinity. And shoes-off-in-the-house was the only authentically Canadian ritual I could think of that didn’t involve donuts or ice, which was sort of novel.

August 3, 2007

Magic Penny

Disturbing revelations today about the song “Magic Penny”, which I bet you didn’t know was composed by Malvina Reynolds, and which I bet you really didn’t know I used to sing at Sunday School. “Love is something if you give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away– you end up having more.” Hmm. Is it any wonder that promiscuity is (apparently) rampant among pre-teens? When giving love away is promoted as the best way to get love back? The song goes on to explain that when you hold on tight to your pennies you get nothing back, but it’s lending and spending that is key to wealth accumulation, and I’m really not so sure about that. No wonder I’ve been led astray! But how illuminating, really, to think the source of so much that ails us can be traced right back to Sunday School. I should have known all along…

July 20, 2007

Babyish

Yesterday I became obsessed with the word “babyish” after it dawned on me that I hadn’t said it in about twenty years. When it used to carry real force, but now it floats like a bubble. I found it amusing that the dictionary says a synonym for “babyish” is “puerile”, just because someone who said “puerile” would probably manage to impress me with their vocab, and yet in essence they would just be pronouncing things “babyish”. Which, really, is quite immature.

The most lovely word I’ve learned all day (thanks to Drabble, my vocab instructor) is empyrean.

July 14, 2007

Glass Worlds

I was surprised to find that the highlight of my trip to the ROM yesterday was the Glass Worlds Exhibition. Intitially I’d scoffed at the idea of a collection of paperweights, but they turned out to be beautiful and mesmerizing. And bookish too, in their own way, as the exhibit explained to me. As literacy increased, desks became fixtures in many households, as did the paraphernalia which adorned them. And just think of your favourite books: how many of their manuscripts must have been saved from a breeze by the fact of a paperweight? (Though truthfully, actually, I’d suggest not that many. I have a suspicion that functionality was never the ultimate object here).

July 2, 2007

Connexion

I usually skim over the obituaries in The Globe and Mail each Saturday, because often they contain some marvelous stories. And so I was reading them this Saturday when I came across a woman who would be missed by her grandson, “Sunny Thrasher”. What a name anyway, but I did notice that the deceased woman’s surname was Besen, and I happen to know that it had been a certain “Sunny Besen Thrasher” who played Paul Edison on The Edison Twins.

I just wonder who of all of us who read The Globe obits this weekend made that connection, and I suspect there couldn’t be more than a handful of us obituary-reading Edison Twins anoraks.

July 2, 2007

My Canada Day Pancake Nightmare

(In lieu of having celebrated this Canada Day in any particular fashion, I bring you a flashback to Canada Day 2004.)

Soon after I volunteered to work at the International Friendship Festival in Himeji Japan, I began receiving strange phone calls. The callers would inform me that they had passed my number onto someone else, and then that someone would call later with a similar message. Finally, a Mrs. Ito reached me and informed me that I would be cooking pancakes at the Festival’s Canadian food booth. The Canadianness would be featured in that pancake accessory, I assumed, the old stand-by, maple syrup.
I tried explaining to Mrs. Ito that having me cook was a bad idea. I once messed up a recipe with three steps by doing them in the wrong order. I have a dangerous faith in ingredient substitution. My cooking is perfectly abominable in every single way. I did have other skills that could probably put me to better use. But Mrs. Ito wasn’t having any of it. She arranged to meet me the next day back at the International Centre.
When we met, her smile was larger than her face, but she pretended to not understand English when I tried to protest the pancakes. There was no turning back, no matter how hard I attempted retreat. Mrs. Ito instructed me that I would face a “cooking rehearsal” on July 1st, the following week. That I was to come bearing ingredients. I left her that day, confused and annoyed.
I found half a packet of pancake mix left over in the cupboard from Shrove Tuesday, and I bought a cheap bottle of Japanese pancake syrup the morning of my rehearsal. I even remembered egg and oil, which I thought was impressive. I did wonder if I should have been making the pancakes from scratch, but I felt so concurrently coerced and put-out that I decided that if Mrs. Ito didn’t like it, frankly, she could stuff it.
But I just had this feeling. A fear of a cooking rehearsal far too strong to be sensible. What could possibly go wrong— just me and Mrs. Ito in a little kitchen? However my apprehension was particularly nagging, so I asked my then-boyfriend Stuart to come with me, and because he feared I was having a nervous breakdown, he reluctantly consented.
Immediately upon arrival at the International Centre as scheduled, I seriously contemplated turning around and sprinting home, but we had already been spotted. We entered the kitchen where we were greeted by sixteen women seated waiting at a table, and they expressed their happiness at attending this wonderful Canadian lunch today. And I desired to be swallowed by the air.
I reluctantly took my “ingredients” from my backpack. “Mix?” they said, evidently a similar word in English and Japanese. Thirty two eyes examined the mix curiously. Much conversation ensued. Presumably about how half a packet of pancake mix would feed sixteen expectant lunchers. After a hasty conference among themselves, it was decided that everyone would have a tiny pancake. So there remained the issue of my inability to cook, but that was ok, mostly because Stuart did most of it. Chatter between the women continued throughout the cooking, and in spite of their big smiles, I didn’t get the impression they were singing my praises.
And the worst was still to come. It was time for the maple syrup, freshly tapped from a Japanese factory. I quickly tore off the label, and when Mrs. Ito asked if it was Canadian maple syrup, I lied and said yes. Clearly the International Friendship Festival Committee were not convinced.
It was the wrong colour, they thought. “Is it honey?” the women kept asking me. That it truly was maple syrup was some form of rightousness. I retained my resolve and the women stopped questioning me. However their own conversation continued in Japanese, smattered with exclaimations of the word “maple” and several audible question marks.
When dinner was served and we all sat down to eat our coin sized pancake. The pancakes were good, and the women were very friendly and someone had found some cookies to make the meal go further. I told them that today was Canada’s birthday, and their all applauded. And then I remembered a bag of Canadian Flag pins in my purse, like a treasure in my hold. I passed them out, and the mood softened a bit at that. The pins lent a certain authenticity to my act. Not only was I an authentic idiot, but a Canadian one too.
Conversation was awkward, mostly consisting of people pointing and laughing at Stuart and I. They talked to me a bit about the Friendship Festival, which I, miraculously, was still supposed to be attending. They asked if I could get some Canadian flags and various paraphernalia for the Canada booth and I told them I could find out if the embassy could provide us with something. Somebody translated into Japanese that I had many friends at the embassy who would supply us with Canadian things, and at that point I began to see how these sorts of misunderstandings get started.

June 27, 2007

Endorsement

Pickle Me This all and sundry are obsessed with Jordan’s Cereals— now on sale at Dominion. But we can’t buy it anymore, because we eat a box a day between us and that can’t be very good.

June 21, 2007

Antimacasser turpitude

I really enjoyed Ian Brown’s consideration of vocabulary in the paper this weekend. It was a great article, with points of view from those who see the benefit of a large vocabulary, and others who see large words as just pretension. I also liked the new words the article taught me, including “Struthious”, which means relating to ostriches and has been removed from the COE. Which is terrible, because it’s the best word I’ve ever heard.

My love of struthious might make clear that I tend toward logophilia. Though I have accepted that in order to be alive, language must grow and change, I relish in new words, terms obsolete. I like words that allow me precision of expression. But I am a very poor logophile too, as my vocabulary is not extraordinary. In most ways it is decidedly average, and too peppered with utterances of “brilliant” and “fuck.” But I make the effort to make mine grow. During the year before I started graduate school, convinced I was too stupid to actually go, I noted every new word in everything I read. Which I do much less now, regretfully, because I do so value that massive document on my computer now full of wonderful words I’d collected, like “xanthic”, “lugubrious” and “soporific”.

Teaching English had me thinking about language in a new, subjective kind of way. I learned the word “avarice” listening to “Astral Weeks”. But I mostly credit Margaret Drabble with expanding my vocabulary during that year– those battered second-hand penguins whilst we lived in Japan. Aware that I would never learn Japanese, I set myself instead the task of English, and I will never ever be done.