July 28, 2005
A Short Story for a Summer's Day
The House on the Bank of the River
Of course the river had once been tamer. The house was built then, and the sun porch years later, when still the land must have stretched languidly toward the river bank in a most appropriate fashion. There had been flower beds, and a plot of grass. The road in front would have been amenable. This was the unapproached edge of town until they extended the purlieus, and scores of hours could have been spent at a time without the passage of even a single car. It had been a narrow road, though once it began to grow, it spread quickly from one lane, to two, then four. The land on the riverside began to erode away. When we bought the house, it was wedged onto a narrow rectangular joke of a lot, bordered on either side of notable length by rushes, respectively, of automobiles and water.
We were sufficiently warned. Any house on the water for our budget was already telling. The real estate agent was honest about the problems, and the bank refused the mortgage. The place was referred to as both a death wish and money-pit. But the thing was, the price was so low we wouldn’t need a mortgage after all, and such short term economics have always made sense to me. My husband too. We wanted a house; we had spent 34 months living in a tent in Ghana and were craving walls, walls, walls, walls far more than we cared about the land.
That the walls were strong was never in doubt. It was a beautiful house, white with green shutters that needed painting when I first saw them. Inside was impeccably maintained, with polished wood floors, giant windows, high ceilings, airy rooms with bookshelves built into the walls. The sun porch was defiant, tacked onto the kitchen, standing high on stilts over the river. You could see the water going by through the narrow cracks between the beams in the wooden floor. The sun shone in from all angles. The house had been vacant for over a year, and the agent showed it, embarrassed with provisos. She was apologetic, but it was on the way to somewhere else we were supposed to go to and she thought it wouldn’t hurt to take a look.
We moved in three months later. We rented a van, and backed it into the driveway while the lights at the intersection were stopped on red and no cars were passing. The van could not be backed up very far and once the traffic began flowing again, cars were forced to swerve around its front third, which remained jutted awkwardly into the street. There was nothing we could do about that. We carried our boxes and furniture into the house with haste, the sooner we could go about unblocking the road.
It was the river everyone worried about, but really, traffic proved to be the biggest problem. We bought a car and I drove it to work every day, and every morning I sat, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel impatiently, awaiting a hole in the parade. No one ever let me in. If the lights were on my side, and left-hand turners were scarce, and I made it out of our driveway in under four minutes, it was going to be a good day. Once the power was out and the lights weren’t running at all, and I waited twelve minutes before just driving out finally, cutting someone off in the process and coming remarkably close to causing an accident, but avoiding it of course. I am a very good driver.
My husband didn’t have this problem. He rode his bike to work and minded the noise at night instead, which never bothered me because I sleep like I’m dead. We had chosen the bedroom at the back of the house for our own, aware that the din from the street would keep him up at night and also because the river view was the best. We had a row of windows along one entire wall. But the sounds of honking horns and slamming breaks seemed to travel long across the river, bouncing off the opposite bank and echo back right into our room. It sounded like the traffic was right outside the window, only if it really had been, the noise would have been louder.
The traffic was the annoyance but the river was a challenge. We’re the kind of people who fly into action when you tell us something can’t be done. My husband is very technical in an imaginative sort of way, and he drew up all kinds of sketches and plans. I like to build things, and together we were determined. Though we were not the first to embark upon this quest. The riverbank was littered with evidence of schemes that had failed before; broken beams to prop the place up, wire mesh to hold the earth together, concrete blocks now scattered in dead fragments along the riverbed.
My husband had a plan, which I supplemented with regular bursts of brilliance. We were going to construct a steel frame against the shoreline, packed with cement. The inches remaining on the edge of the earth and the perimeter of the house would be seeded to encourage strong and healthy soil. We set about it, and ran into all the problems you’d expect with zoning and practicality. How do you set cement amidst a swirling stream? We spend days in hip waders, the water overflowing into them, as we examined the solid foundations of our house against the fragility of the land on which it sat upon.
That summer, we dared the fierce and frightening storms, when the rain battled the windowpanes and the wind shook us both awake in our bed. It was a particularly brutal summer, each storm coming in on the tail of another, defying all statistical norms and predictions. It was amazing to watch the fury from our windows, the white caps, the lightning, and the sounds of the thunder splitting the night. The waves would slam against the bank again and again just below our bedroom windows and we imagined we felt the loss of each thin slice of land as they slowly washed away. One dark night we sat on the sun porch, though of course then there was no sun. There was only noise surrounding us and water splashing through the mesh screens that kept the bugs out. Eventually the rain and the waves began to soak us, but we couldn’t go inside. It was the best place to be in the middle of the storm, inside but yet not. We were only protected so far, and that risk was thrilling. The sun porch hovered over the water supported by its four wooden stilts and fast the wind blew. That gentle, steady sway amidst such a furious storm was surprising. The limbs of our structure were forced to stretch and flex, extending unnaturally further and further with each movement and we fully expected the entire thing would collapse. But we stayed there, huddled together wet in the middle of the maelstrom and we knew everything would be okay.
We had neighbours. Our house was one of four in a row, all built around the same time when the property they stood on was halfway desirable. Though we didn’t see our neighbours. All were white haired, in their seventies and eighties, and at least one of them had called the police once to complain about some of the work we were doing to prevent further erosion on the bank. No one had been over to say hello or welcome. We didn’t mind the isolation. In some ways, it had been an attractive feature of the place. For the longest time, the existence of our neighbours had failed to even register in our consciousness at all, until the night the place two down from ours took a final breath and then collapsed into the river, just like everyone had been predicting it would and I suppose there were some people puffed up with self-righteousness who met this news with glee.
No one was hurt. I read about it in the paper. The homeowner was a Mr. Braddock, a widower, and he’d been in the hospital during the storm that pulled the house he’d lived in for sixty-four years over the edge and into the river in pieces. This was said to be a blessing, even though Mr. Braddock was dying. The incident brought the rest of the houses on the river bank into a mid sized public spotlight, though comment was concerned primarily with public safety and the issue of erosion was scarcely mentioned. What kind of people insist on living in these places, these shabby little
lots wrought with danger? The other two houses remaining on our bank were torn down before the summer was out, their white-haired residents inevitably committed to some sort of institution or another.
But there was no such place for people like us. We stayed because it was ours and we had no other choice. We remained committed to saving the house, the first solid-walled structure we’d ever lived in together, and that meant something to us. We’ve never been the kind of people who respond well to orders. We stay, because until we’ve been proven wrong about this place we’ve found, we’ve been right all along, and there is security there. And there is , even on our spindly shaking limbs built not so high above tumult and torrent. I don’t know where it’s come from, but it’s here, in each other and the walls of this house we’ve built up together. We brave the storms and mind the daily inconveniences of this life, and other houses might fall off the edge of the earth, but ours just won’t. We’ve got to believe that.
(This story copyright Kerry Clare 2005)
July 27, 2005
Blair quote
“It’s time we stopped saying: ‘OK, abhor their methods, but we kind of see something in their ideas, or maybe they’ve got a sliver of excuse or justification’. They’ve got no justification for it.” So says Tony Blair and I completely agree. But I also don’t think anyone sane is justifying what terrorists have done, rather they’re pointing out the fact that the invasion of Iraq has done nothing to protect us from them, and really just made us more vulnerable.
July 27, 2005
Remembering where you were
The British Education secretary announces a 27 million pound scheme to give bags of free books to children up for four years. The Guardian reviews “Mediated: The Hidden Effects of the Media on You and Your World” by Thomas de Zengotit, which I read as a brilliant excerpt in Harpers last winter. This is a book of awareness, not conclusions, as the review states, and leaves you wondering, “If I am a sponge, an assemblage of images, sounds and influences, always looking out for my 15 minutes of fame, always rehearsing what I’ll say if a camera pokes its head round my doorway or a producer from reality television comes knocking with a contract, then where is the real me, the inner core, not the outer show?” The by now well documented story of how Stella’s groove was mislaid. Today I learned the word salubrious, which means healthy, good. Naomi Wolf compares a recent book about Mary Woolstonecraft to Edward Klein’s new biography of Hillary Clinton, both of which demonstrate “the collective unconscious of our culture at work, throwing up vivid, even lurid fantasies that emerge out of the shifting balance of power between women and men.” (The Klein book was excerpted in Vanity Fair recently, and it was godawful). And here is Daniel Clowes on his new book “Ice Haven.” In further news, I’ve started “Small Island” by Andrea Levy, and my allergy to lake water has resulted in something horrible occurring on my eyelid. Most importantly, today we bought a mattress.
July 25, 2005
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
We went to Hiroshima for the first time just over a year ago, and these were my thoughts at the time. “We’ve been talking about Hiroshima, because we’re going on Thursday and I am also reading The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock which is about the legacy of the atom bomb. I realise that this is another of those controversial issues in which if you have a decided opinion you believe in 100%, then you are most likely ignorant. The fact of Japan’s brutality in wartime is clear, and indeed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended WW2. And perhaps the sacrifice was worth the war’s end, and ended all of the other kinds of ongoing attacking and bombings. So that is that. But if you find any way to really completely excuse this act, beyond tired justifications, than I do not claim to understand your soul. Because when you see what this war did to people’s bodies, minds, homes and lives. When you see the complete and utter destruction, and the pain and suffering- there is no excuse and there never can be. Nothing anyone’s nation ever did justifies such infliction upon its citizens. But maybe it had to happen? We’ll never know otherwise. Having an opinion on this issue is not what’s important. What’s important is that in Hiroshima, we see the ugly heart of war and we know that nothing is worth that sort of fighting for. It should be an example to leaders that every other foreign policy besides war must be exercised. That you can’t attack on a whim, because this is what you end up with. That you are never going to convince a mother that her dead baby’s life was worth the cost of “freedom”. It’s hard to win dead hearts and minds. Through of the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have been blessed with the most straightforward message- the writing is on the wall but no one is reading it. The act of war is a warcrime.”
The 60th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are nearing. The Guardian has published quite a few features about these events, particularly this and this. Today a lot of people are seeking justification for another war, and these articles demonstrate the danger of that.
July 22, 2005
Canadian Summertime
We’ve had a busy week, which required us to swim in lakes daily. Our two day break at the Delawana was amazing. Our room was beautiful with a screened in porch and a jacuzzi. We canoed and kayaked, and it was very upscale Butlins, with a Rock and Roll Tribute show. Alan Thicke was a guest a few weeks ago, so you know it’s a good place. It is and we had a wonderful time. I am enjoying showing Stuart Canadian summertime. He was on corn-watch all the way home, but alas it is early in the season so there was none yet available at the roadside. We’ll keep an eye out. In other news, I was kidnapped on Thursday and taken to another bridal shower! This was thrown by Britt’s mom and our neighbour, and there were so many people there. It was lovely to have all these women come together to celebrate a new marriage, and I think such traditions are an excellent feature of our society. Anyway, I have been terribly out of the loop and mad novel reading as the summer is passing me by and my stack of novels to be read remains a large stack.
Here, on how porn has infiltrated everyday life, magazines Zoo and Nuts as evidence. I find embarrassing what those magazines say about the society I live in, and agree that young boys (and girls) are going to have increasing warped ideas about sexuality. Here, on looking for ladies in the Vatican- in the archives for records of those who wrote in Latin. Here, Ivor Tossell keeps us abreast of what’s sweeping the nation this week (and it ain’t happy slapping). Very funny, via Bookninja, a critique of authors’ acknowledgement pages. Russell Smith asks if Harry Potta and his friends are indicative the loss of distinction between culture and youth culture? He also doesn’t appear to like books with more than one woman. Cool! Top 10 “On the move” books, including “The Summer Book” by Tove Janssen.
We took a boat ride with some Americans this morning. They were really lovely, but I really noticed such a difference between their response to the London terror attacks and other Canadians and Britons I’ve spoken to. It’s really so much more of a personal issue for them. We distance ourselves from it, perhaps because we can and from the few words we exchanged about it, they definitely can’t.
July 22, 2005
Guide to Identifying Shitty Highway Houses
In our drive up to Muskoka this week, we named the roadside phenomenon that is the “Shitty Highway House”. These are houses with skyhigh levels of shittiness, and can identified by having two or more of the following characteristics:
1) A door hovering in midair, with no means to exit to the ground. Somehow stairs seem to be optional in shitty highway houses.
2) A former school bus parked in the drive way
3) A pick-up truck on blocks
4) Four vehicles or more
5) More than two extensions, especially if they are constructed from completely different materials and don’t match
6) A door or window that has been bricked or boarded up, or a door or window that has been replaced and doesn’t quite fit in the alloted space
7) No visible door and no window larger 8 by 7 inches
8) An elaborately-planned new home, abandoned midjob and thus lacking bricks, a front porch, garage doors, a lawn etc but still happily lived-in
9) No landscaping
10) Raised bungalow
July 18, 2005
Konstantin
I love Margaret Drabble. I am reading the afore mentioned “Gates of Ivory” and absolutely loving it. It’s the final book in “The Radiant Way” trilogy, which got me on my Drabble kick in the first place, though it concerns less the three women of the first two books than one of their friends, Stephen Cox, who is missing somewhere in Asia. In Thailand, he has met up with a young photographer called Konstantin Vassiliou who I realised was a character in “The Needle’s Eye”, which was published in 1972. “Gates of Ivory” was published two decades later. In the former, Konstantin was the son of the main character, maybe ten years old? And now he turns up again, grown up in the mid-eighties. There is no reason that had to have happened. Konstantin in “The Needle’s Eye” could have been a forgettable character, and that Margaret Drabble would choose to resurrect him is just fascinating. I look forward to finding out why she did as the story develops. Her characters frequently recur, but just in passing. I absolutely love that world.
July 18, 2005
And you know it
Lately, the world has been presenting itself to me on a silver platter. Not the whole world mind you, but just the parts I am interested in. We had another weekend in Toronto, and were shown hospitality beyond our wildest dreams. On Saturday, my friends threw the world’s most pleasant wedding shower in my honour, at Burwash Hall at Vic. We had an enormous amount of fun and I saw people I haven’t seen in ages. Everyone had a really good time, and it was quite a surprise. Was rendered dumbfounded and we all know how often that occurs. Afterwards it was dinner in Chinatown, and then karaoke at the Gladstone which was interesting to say the least, and quite enjoyable. I was surrounded by all the beautiful people and had a lot of fun. The rest of the weekend was less organised, and mostly involved me reclining in various places. We had a brilliant dinner at Kate’s and today I got the world’s cutest bathing suit, which is a good replacement for my current “the world’s biggest bathing suit”. I deal in superlatives. The fun just continues then, as we are going out for dinner tomorrow night on a gift certificate thanks to my dad, and then to the Delawana Inn on Thursday for two days of Canadian Summertime fun (with canoes!) thanks to my sister’s wedding gift. If you’re lucky and you know it, stomp your feet.
July 16, 2005
The future's in the air
I flipped through “The Believer” today, and though I am way too poor to buy it managed to read the excellent Three Songs from the End of History: Billy Joel, The Scorpions and Jesus Jones, about pop at the end of the Cold War, which is definitely a subject subject dear to my heart. It also concurs with my theory that the nineties were heaven on earth, and we were spoiled for it. An article on lost photos of Hiroshima, which made me think for the first time about why our enduring image of the attack there is of the mushroom cloud, whereas pictures of London or Dresden burning are almost gratuituous. We saw Ann Marie MacDonald read tonight at the Lakefield Literary Festival tonight, and she was brilliant. She read from “The Way The Crow Flies” and it was so gripping. I was gutted that it ended when it did, and it turned out they’d gone over time. I’ve really missed being engaged with culture the last year or so, and even when I lived in England, where I was still an outsider. Canadians are obsessed with themselves and with spend hours defining Canadianness and Can Lit etc. and I’ve really missed those conversations, that exchange of ideas. It’s really good to be back.
