Rereading John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

Of all the books I read in my adolescence, from The Great Gatsby to The Catcher in the Rye, books assigned in English classes (The Mayor of Casterbridge), books I read for fun (Don Quixoite) and edification (The Consolation of Philosophy), I still believe John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath has been the most important.

Like a song that not only stirs us but revives memories in us of a time when we first tuned in, a great book is both a tome within itself and within us. There is something of a bridge between the words on the page and how they resonate inside us. The philosopher Plato looked down upon artists because they chose to imitate what he considered an imitation. A painter paints a table when the table, in Plato's argument is only a copy of the great eternal idea of a 'table'. 

For me, a great writer is able to create an entire world and the fortunate reader, an opportunity to explore it and become in some way lost in the images, amused and entertained by the scenes, befriended by the characters and moved by the varying moods. The work of art, especially a book is not truly an imitation but a reality, a realm unto itself, a place that changes though the print never truly changes, the story never changes. There is a kind of mystical relationship between the reader and the words written. It is a timeless world that unfolds in time and does so eternally. The words remain but the reader encounters a variation of the same due to his or her experience with the book. 

Steinbeck's world is such a place that ones feels at home. Once the book begins, there is no turning back and though some chapters are difficult, it is a journey that doesn't let go until you find yourself at the end.

For those that haven't read The Grapes of Wrath it's more than just a novel about the Joads. Though the backdrop is the Depression, the places, Oklahoma and California and the roads in between, the real focus is survival along with the need for human support and co-operation, ideals and dreams that are achievable and in reach but often thwarted and obstructed by the greedy, the arrogant and ignorant (for isn't greed a form of blindness). Though there is no good and evil, no black and white in the story, merely a struggle between viewpoints, the conflict between the haves and have-nots is upfront and personal. 

To begin, the Joads, like many farmers of the 1930s Dust Bowl drought years lose their farm and in order to make ends meet, drive out to California in search of work. Along the way they are challenged and though the family is little by little torn apart, a greater picture arises, a greater bond becomes recognized. Though people like the Joads are abused by the cops who act as bullies for the well-to-do, they are never broken. 

It is a perennial story of survival and hope. The ending differs from the film adaptation and perhaps it is the most haunting in literature. 

To read such a work has brought back memories of my teen years, the time when I first discovered Bob Dylan's early folk music and the music of Dylan's main influence, Woody Guthrie. 

While reading the novel, I seemed to recall the strikes my father attended at General Motors in St.Catharines. 

I also remembered the effect the novel had on me then, the longing to live in a world where families worked hard to stay together. Though I knew my parent's separation was inevitable, I admired Ma Joad's tenacity, her fierce will to stay strong in the face of adversity and loss. 

I also looked upon Tom Joad, the pivotal protagonist as not only an icon of hope and justice, but of courage and endurance. For me, high school was hell but there had been other hells out there and Tom was the kind of man I would have wanted to be my best friend, my wing man in a fight or conflict or bad corner.

There was also something to having a brother like Al or younger siblings like Ruthie and Winfield. The Joads are never alone and when I first read the book, it was difficult coming to the end when I knew it would be the end of their kinship. Even tonight, after reading the last page for the second time, it is like closing the door on a crowd of kind, but sturdy companions.

There should be a word to describe the melancholy people feel when a good book comes to an end, when the reader must resentfully place the book back on the shelf after there are no more page to embrace and devour. It is a mournful waking moment and only with beautiful works of literature do I encounter such sombre moods. I can't just jump into another book because the aura of the just read masterpiece is too overwhelming. And the aura, I know, often lingers to the point that other novels will routinely feel pale in the great work's wake. 

I felt the same after my first reading. It is harder even now. I'll probably be a wreck should I return to the book in the years to come.

The thing that stays with me the most is how timely and timeless the scenes of the book played out, especially when the Joads and the other characters in the novel had to deal with cops. The law enforcement of those times and places were bullies then, they are bullies now. I've kept abreast of the Occupy Movement through Democracy Now and it saddens me to think that so little has changed and yet so much. I think about my recent dealing with a Niagara winery, their mistreatment of employees and if it wasn't for books like The Grapes of Wrath, for human rights and labour relations groups, I wouldn't have received a settlement. I can say John Steinbeck has had a great influence on my life in both his writing and the awareness he spread, rippling through the decades. 

Such novelists leave deep impacts in our lives when we let them. All it takes is a simple motion of the eyes and some understanding, some basic literacy and we're on our way to dreaming and feeling something beyond ourselves. The trouble is the confusion we encounter when the books end. What do we do with our learning, who do we talk with? I've always been a loner and there are so few people I can speak to that share similar interests. The Internet is one place but I don't really feel connected to people, not with a blog or with messages on Facebook. Our digital age has tried to recreate a pale version of human interaction. Social media is far from truly being social. I much prefer the company of the Joads, their faces in the firelight, the distant sound of harmonica, the smell of bacon and the soulful eyes of Tom and his preacher friend Casey discussing God, the world and humanity. 

I know I can go back to them.

Falling in Love with Karin Fossum

I'm not one for mysteries. There never seems to be a shortage of hard-boiled, alcoholic detectives with ex-wives and troubled children. Every time I wander into the mystery section, I feel a yawn rising in my chest. I've picked up so many books and it's the same thing for me. Either an American mystery with the same page-turning gusto of a Michael Bay movie where you have to keep reading because your reptilian brain won't forgive you if you don't or another badly translated, badly written Scandinavian novel (or trilogy of novels....hmmmm what could they be?) with boring characters who speak boring dialogue. And the narration is terrible (really can anyone explain the popularity of Steig Larsson's books? Come on....)

(Though to my mother's credit, I applaud English mysteries in her honor and hopefully, eventually, will get around to them when I get the time.)

The mystery section, in other words is the last section for me in the book store. 

But there are a few shining lights and one I must mention is Karin Fossum. 

I simply love her books. I first came across her by accident while perusing Amazon.com. I had read the Toronto's Star bi-weekly 'Whodunnit' section and came across the name of an Icelandic writer. I requested the book from the library only to find it a bit disappointing (again hard-nosed detective who drinks a little too much and has a drug-addicted daughter....and a case that 'can't' be solved...blah, blah, blah...). 

When I went back to Amazon I wanted to see if all Scandinavian mystery novelists were the same. To my eternal joy and happiness I found the name of Karin Fossum among the Amazon recommends section.(I found others but they're not worth mentioning, their books seemingly suffering from bad translation and typical plot-lines relying too much on shock and gore instead of good characters.)

I started with Se deg ikke tilbake or Don't Look Back, her first novel to be translated into English from Norwegian. And all I can say is I can't look back. The book is excellent and best of all, believable. 

The story revolves around the mystery of a girl found naked on a cold Norwegian beach. Detective Sejer is heading the investigation, an older, well-seasoned but certainly not cynical police man. Though he has a world weariness to him, he demonstrates poise and diplomacy and is tough and terse when he needs to be. There is no element of corruption in his character and though he might sound like a by-the-book gumshoe, he's more a down-to-earth realist who simply wants to get thing solved and set right. There is an Everyman quality and he isn't perfect. He has regrets, he suffers from the loss of his wife. He knows he won out by meeting and marrying her. There is an element of mourning but an equally real motivation to let the past be and move on. 

His sidekick Skarre smokes cigarettes. He is young and attractive and there's a kindness to him. Though he might appear innocent and wide-eyed, he's no rookie and works alongside Sejer. 

What I loved about the book is the simplicity, the directness of the text. A good artist paints a picture but a great one allows you to step in it. And that's how Fossum works. She relies on the reader's imagination to help her paint the scenes. Most readers have an idea of the Norwegian countryside and so she helps us in some ways, but she lets us go in others. Her descriptions are rarely elaborate and exaggerated. I would say she sets up her world with a modicum of sentences. The spareness is beautiful and often bewildering because it seems we are following just behind the main characters, getting lost with them, wondering the same things. 

Something similar could be said for all her books. We are there and the best part of being there, is the feeling, both in the moods of the characters and their emotions. We sympathize with Sejer because he in turn is sympathetic. We learn he has a daughter and the daughter has adopted a boy from Africa. Fossum sheds light on the racism in Norway where in such books as When The Devil Holds the Candle and The Indian Bride, the immigrant and the outsider are given harsh treatment. 

There is also a great deal of compassion felt for the mentally ill. Fossum herself worked in hospitals and nursing homes and was most likely no strange to the trials of the psychologically wounded. This is evident in He Who Fears the Wolf, Black Seconds and Bad Intentions. Her crazier characters are often more sane and human than her criminals which exhibit their own crazed behavior. 

And yet, I often hesitate to use the word 'criminal'. The guilty are guilty but there are too many shades of grey here in Fossum's Norwary, a nice contrast to the black and white we see in  our typical American mystery where we are safe with the good guy and threatened by the bad. With Sejer, there are often cases  he has to deal with where the criminal is an old lady or just some kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. The so-called 'bad intentions' aren't really 'intentions', just results of a situation gone wrong which makes the endings of her books feel more incomplete and of course, more real. The case might be closed or it might not be. It's all so ambiguous and complicated and all-too-human.

I've read nearly all her books and I've not been disappointed with a single one. Some I've loved more than others but as a whole, I love them the way any voracious reader would love a writer who continually delivers. I can look forward to Sejer, to his outlook, to his development. At one point he had a dog who passed on. At one point he had a girlfriend, a doctor in a mental hospital with a kinkiness to her. Like in life, people and loved ones come and go. In my latest Fossum read, Bad Intentions, the reader encounter's a moment in which Sejer faces his own fears and thoughts regarding mortality following a walk with Skarre. 

Again I don't read mystery but I wouldn't call Karin Fossum just a mystery a writer. She transcends the genre, makes it personal, making it, in short, her own. For me, it is literature with a mystery. Her books are like the best friends you want to keep in contact with. Seeing where it all goes in turn allows the reading to feel even more rewarding. She's an author who values the intelligence of the reader and over delivers with her characters, her stories and her writing.

And when someone goes above and beyond, thinks the best of us, doesn't insult our intelligence or rely upon the derivative to sell her story, what's not to love? (Fans of the Larsson, you really need to see the light...)

(A final note, I must acknowledge the astute and careful work of translators like Charlotte Barslund that have made Fossum's world so readily available in English. Without people like her, the atmosphere, mood and credibility of another world would remain alien and inaccessible. Many, many, many thanks Charlotte.)

My Life Now as a Hawaiian Shirt

Benjamin Franklin once wrote in his maxims that 'he who is an old young man will become a young old man.'

Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that some men are born posthumous. Mircea Eliade, Romanian historian and professor of religious studies at the University of Chicago wrote a novella entitled Youth Without Youth that was adapted into a film. I've never read the book nor seen the movie but I can relate to the title. 

If I could rewrite the poet's famous line 'Je est un autre' ('I' is the other or someone else) it would be Jeune est un autre' (Youth is the other).

I've been an old man all my life. And it's not that I bemoan my fate, in fact I favor the Nietzschean, amor fati or love of fate. It is what it is, embrace it, nourish it, watch it, let it be. 

And so it is.

For me youth has always been equal to idiocy, immaturity and ignorance. Youth is truly wasted on the young. The old are nostalgic, eyes glistening with thoughts for the golden time while the young go about blind, not recognizing the potential in their energy, the immense future and how that energy they possess is so often wasted on pranks and other innocuous but pathetic pursuits.

This is demonstrated in numerous ways. If you've ever driven by a high school, you'll notice the young walk out into traffic, brazen with a thousand lives in their pocket. If you've ever been to any downtown club on any given weekend in any given major city, the young dance all night and drink to their hearts content, vomiting to their stomach's discontent the next morning. And if you've ever wandered the halls of a university dorm, peeked into their rooms, the young are capable of pulling off all-nighters usually as a last resort due to their procrastination. 

The young are careless because they can be. 

Even when I was young I wasn't and in some ways envied the youth around me. I felt like I was speaking to my peers as if I came from another planet or though another medium. My classmates gravitated towards certain kinds of music and movies and though I tried to emulate them by following their interests I routinely gave up and subjected myself to a kind of generational exile. 

I was always too cautious. I looked both ways, I've never really been one to party all night and I did my work on time.

And that's how it's been. I've come into this world to feel alone amongst those my own age, to be removed.

But it's strange, I always think of a scene in the film Wild Strawberries wherein the professor, Isak is looking in on the dream world of his memories. Standing to the side amidst the trees, listening to the chatter and gossip of his cousin and sister, Sara begins to describe the young Isak as a refined with sensitive soul, mature and intellectual whereas Sigfrid, the misfit brother is more "fresh and exciting." 

It is a melancholy scene because Isak is an old man, has been all his life. He lost the girl of his dreams because of his seriousness, his appreciation of art and beauty. The poets are poets because they aren't the exciting ones. An artist has to fall for the careless muse, she is unreachable and pernicious in her immaturity.

I think of this scene and relate to it, especially when I'm looking online for a companion - I find the pretty ones just want to watch hockey or go out dancing at a club, dating a guy with abs and arms. I could do without hockey and dancing and I'd work out more if I didn't have to work. 

Fresh and exciting. I've never been those things. I've been disillusioned. I've been lost. I've been found. I've been intrigued. I've been speculative and I've been confounded. 

The trouble is, I'm an anomaly, I'm too curious and too easily bored. I probably should be in a big city, go to art museums and poetry readings but those worlds are filled with hypocrites and wannabes. The art world died as soon as Picasso ruined the canvas with his misogyny and ego and Joyce stabbed literature in the heart.

Or maybe I should be in Toronto, trying to break into the music scene. People tell me I have a beautiful singing voice (Dan Hill of 'Sometimes When We Touch' at a Songwriters conference even conferred) and my songs are unique but just the idea of trying to be an entrepreneur in a high-pressure field doesn't impress me. The idea of being on Twitter disgusts me and I'm clueless and sometimes, happily so.

I don't want to be a part of those kinds of worlds. 

Instead I'm in south western Ontario, in a friendly rural community. I've been hired on for two jobs, one working as a service agent at a rental car company and the other job, a food demonstrator. 

It's almost comedic. I feel like I've retired from what ever noble task I never completed or stepped up to tackle to find myself in the Hawaiian shirt section of my life. I'm sure they'll be fun jobs. No big salary I can boast. There's nothing remotely engaging about either position. They are just joe-jobs to pay the rent. 

But what is this sadness, this sense of ho-hum hovering behind me, looking down at the bald (Or blind) spot of my life? (Ich weiss nicht, das es bedeuten soll, das ich so traurig bin?)

The jobs are part-time, flexible which will allow me ample hours to read and write and be left in peace. I like peace. I don't like crowds, the chaos is too much and the sense of anything could happen disarms.

I am an old man, right? 

There are no regrets just a longing for something more meaningful and beautiful. A helpless yearning for a kindness from the greater mystery. It seems like it's always been this way, only now I'm wearing the shirt and finding it tough to forgiven myself for being different and outside the regular circles that people find themselves. Sometimes I've managed to sit in on the circumference, just in a few steps away from the isolation, looking in long enough to feel I mattered, offering something succinct, perhaps profound and belonged for a short span only to wake up and find it was illusory. There were a few conversations I loved and there was that golden light that filtered through a moment, a eureka moment but it lasted for the duration of a timely topic and once the discussion closed its door, I somehow closed myself off as well. 

When I go out, driving past the brown, skeleton-like corn fields, out for groceries or the library, it's only to help me appreciate the coming back, the coming home. I go into town and the drive is lovely, there's no traffic to complain about, no overpasses and cement walls that make feel even more trapped. On Sundays I pick up the Toronto Star. I have my wine , my books and if I keep going, I might sound like a Simon and Garfunkel song.

I have my Hawaiian shirt, a breath of fresh air, an affordable peace for now and maybe there's someone out there who's envious of me. Someone who had all the freshness and excitement. I don't know.

Freshness expires, excitement eventually has to throw up. I guess my wardrobe is something to accept.

Disquiet and Solitude

I would say a good portion of my life I've spent alone. Perhaps because I'm an introvert I prefer my own company. Or maybe I find the 'finding' of company so tiresome. 

Sometimes when I see people together when I do attend the occasional social gathering, whether a party or with friends at a bar, I wonder how people can keep up with everything. It seems for every situation there is an alteration in one's identity. I know for myself, I have to guard my words, censor myself depending on the company I keep. Visiting a particular friend, we can be intellectual. Visiting another, we can be artists and dreamers. Typically I prefer being a dreamer and it is closer to who I am but that doesn't say I'm less with the first friend should we stay geared to the left side of the brain when it comes to topics of discussion. 

And the same for family. I am different when I am around my father as opposed to my mother. I keep a different conversation in my brother's company as opposed to my step-brother (though inevitably with him, discussions are secondary to the wine and should we run out, he calls it a night).

I always think of the stoic philosopher Seneca who said when "I go among men I feel less of a man." Seneca, like Arthur Schopenhauer preferred quiet and unfortunately for Seneca, he lived above a rowdy bathhouse in Rome.

Maybe it isn't so much being less a man than reducing the aspects or angles in which others can regard you. We can't help but be aware of how we affect people. I would argue it is a strength to be able to adapt to one's environment, change, find sympathy and harmony with varying crowds and individuals who can offer contrary and unique perspectives. 

It should be said, those we love the most, whom we hold in the highest regard, they are the ones we can be the closest to ourselves.

But what about being simply alone? Though it may appear to be common sense, when we are on our own, we are supposedly the closest to ourselves. 

Is this true? If we reveal bits and pieces here and there to select friends and acquaintances, work colleagues and family members, is there a limit to what we reveal to ourselves. How many of us feel happy alone? Is solitude a confining situation or a means to peace and serenity?

I always enjoyed what French philosophers like Pascal and La Bruyer have suggested, that merely the inability to be alone, unable to sit in one's room is the cause of all the world's unhappiness and unrest. There is a certain truth to this idea. Something to muse on, wonder about for what would the world be like if most of us stayed home on Friday and Saturday nights? I'm sure there would be a reduction in crimes, less emergency calls to 9-1-1. The E.R. at most hospitals would resemble calm doctor's waiting rooms.

Why else is there drugs to take and drinks to consume? It is not so much being unable to sit alone in one's room as opposed to sitting alone in one's consciousness. There is restlessness in our being, humanity cannot sit still and when it tries, it feels the disquiet. It all amounts to curiosity and exploration, wonder and boredom, loneliness and loss. Some philosophers would suggest we are all looking for a kind of home, a peace. Others would say we are just occupying space, going from one desire to the next. The knowledge we acquire is no more important to our general well being than musical theory to a squirrel. Despite all we've learned as a species, from the events of the day to the discoveries in science, much of what we do has a tint of mystery to it, not including the greater mystery that bookends our lives. And for what we endure, so much continues on unanswered shrouded in sporadic moments of beauty.

And this is where we impart value into what we do with others or ourselves. I think I've come to the point in my life where I can say I enjoy being with people but only for so long. I like to make an appearance, as most of us do but there's nothing like being at home for me, playing the guitar, watching a movie, reading a book, sitting down to write whether in my journal or another blog for the sake of expression.

That's not say I don't feel the disquiet. 

I can look back to my memories of living in B.C. or even more recent living in my hometown and place them on pedestals. I can recall the afternoon I went to the Vancouver Central Public Library on an autumn day and discovered Ivan Bunin, the Twentieth Century Russian story writer. Without solitude I couldn't have enjoyed his works. 

But then it only goes so far until I crave the company of others. And this is where I find the balance can be difficult, wearisome as much of my life I have only encountered select individuals who could share ideas with, thoughts. It is fine to meet people, connect in the moment but the real work comes in the continuing on, in the learning. I don't place any confidence in our technology to keep people together. It is the effort to be curious about each other that brings like minds out into the open. If anything, technology is another screen between people. I feel for people who heavily rely upon texting to be social. 

For me solitude is my regular setting. The venturing out takes time for me, I have a burst of courage and wonder but then I lose interest inevitably and return to myself. I have a restless mind and I need new things to think about, I need rest from the crowds, from the Friday nights where in most social situations I feel more alone than I do when I am home by myself.

I suppose it all goes back to the idea of how and what we reveal when we are with others. Soren Kirkegaard once wrote 'the crowd is untruth.' And it would make sense because we all put on a presentation, our clothes matching the personality we have chosen for the evening. Who we are when we are amongst others isn't the truth, just a variation upon a variation of who we think we are. 

Maybe I'm more adept at sitting still, sitting alone in my room but the disquiet never fully leaves, it doesn't think to abandon me and when the solitude wears, I know I have to change my scenery. Mostly I begin to pray that what I will cautiously approach next will offer something not so much to make me appreciate being alone again but more or less bring me comfort, a challenge, even a sense of brief homecoming.

Without Genius

My father and I get together once a week. We go to our local watering-hole, Bugsy's in North End St.Catharines and have a beer, a pizza or wings. Sometimes we watch a soccer games, sometimes we discuss family, sometimes we get into politics and ideas. 

Yesterday my father brought up an article he had read in the New York Times on the weekend. My father doesn't subscribe to the Times but he gets the Toronto Star supplement and finds himself perusing the pages.  The article that caught his attention had to do with the lack of genius in our times. The writer asked "Where are the Einsteins, where are the great theorists and philosophers?"

The journalist's question has been mine for a long time. Glancing over at my father, our beer glasses half-full (or half-empty) I responded by saying that genius has been mired by the mediocrity of modern life. We have technology that doesn't so much answer our problems but become problems in themselves. The latest gadget, the latest digital device is no more a balm for the troubled human soul than a confusing distraction. Video games, iphones, ipods, texting... these are all symptoms of poor spiritual growth, arrested development.

But it also has to do with the poverty in first world countries, the lack of jobs, as much as the modern university. Twenty years ago, before globalization, middle-class factory workers could provide for their children, for their education. Nowadays students are inundated with loans, debts. Their grades are fair, they work hard not so much with the books but at low-paying jobs to keep themselves afloat. Even in St.Catharines, a city far from Toronto and Vancouver, the rent is not cheap here. I paid less in Vancouver. 

My father agreed and we fell silent but I have taken the question along with me. Last night, during an evening bike ride, I passed through the poorer parts of the city. I realized we are living in a time without genius because the young don't have the opportunity to develop. The reason schools are rampant with orgies of alcohol is because students need to dull the hopelessness. The reason they play video games is because they need the distraction. Books are the enemies, never a solace, university a prison, a hell one must get through to get the job, to find the career that may not be satisfying. 

Further on my trip, I rode across the bridge near the Henley Regatta. A lone rower made her way over the waters, her back to her destination, a pink cap on her head. Minutes later, I found myself on a street with houses backing on the regatta. Monstrous houses, pillars and beautiful gardens. Could genius come from these homes? I shook my head. Not likely. Security and safety breed boredom. The rich kids want to make their parents proud, not by rocking the boat but by being trophies. Some will make money, become lawyers and physicians, while others will pursue the arts, not to change or make the world more interesting but to become scholars. A rich man doesn't have to worry if their son or daughter decides to major in English with the intention of becoming a Ph.D.

Without struggle and strife, vision is thwarted by the emptiness of well-pampered lives. There have been instances where men and women from rich families provided us with notable artists but these artist suffered. Proust writing his novel in a cork-lined room, asthmatic; Tolstoy ashamed of his younger self, became more a peasant than the personification of a Russian landowner. Pushkin and Dante were both exiled. 

Crossing Ontario street, I saw the Brock tower in the hazy distance. I know they are constructing an arts centre in downtown St.Catharines but then, what good will it do? The university is not the environment for genius to flourish. Its bureaucratic noose makes independent thought impossible and if any ideas do surface, they are at best born deformed, a hybrid of academic rhetoric and professorial ego. The heart is not allowed to enter the ivory tower and this why the substance of so much literary work is emotionless and sterile. Inspiration dries up and the idea of publishing instead of perishing holds the professor hostage.

And it doesn't matter what you publish, so long as it astounds your peers. But what peers? The image of the absent-minded professor is not far from the truth. I remember attending an art conference at Brock University in my first year. I was excited at the prospect of being surrounded by thinkers, exploring the mysteries and deconstructing the fables behind selected museum pieces. The first and only lecture I attended, I was immediately appalled. A professor, a woman in her mid-forties stood for an hour discussing the reflection of hair in the mirror of an Ingres portrait. I couldn't believe I wasted an entire hour. I waited for her to explore other facets of the painting but no. Her entire focus was on the mirror and her colleagues lapped it up like dehydrated dogs at a toilet on a humid summer afternoon. I felt so sick. 

And I continue to feel sick at every academic encounter. The university is like a hospital (and I've been in both), dulled, clouded in florescent light, all humanity excised, all pulse and wonder reduced, flatness and vanity blown out of proportion. Give me a doctor of medicine and a doctor of Philosophy or English and what they will most share is their inability to see people, to see life. If it can't be found in a text book, what good is it then? The ivory tower is truly an institution - closer to a penitentiary than a place of wisdom and higher learning.

Art has become less beautiful and more political, every piece another statement. And it's tiring to see another opinion garbed by an artist's need to be right about something, to show the mirror to humanity and say 'see, see...see...' God... We don't need another artist mountain of garbage or a man made out of clocks to remind us that modern life is a nauseating joke, a tale told by an idiot.

Passing behind the video rental stores on Lake Street I felt sad. It's no wonder we turn to the movie theatre and television for consolation. With the artist and the academic, living out their holier, self-aggrandizing roles, their lessons little more than the echoes of a megalomaniac sensibility justifying a pay check, we need the screen, the re-lived formulas and fables of the latest Michael Bay slush cinema. Not only this, with one feminist academic saying chivalry, romance and love are all dead along with the scientist exclaiming there is no soul, it's no wonder we want to watch a romantic comedy or get lost in a contrived, derivative pop song, formulated not by the well-proportioned singer herself but a small backroom network of former recording artists and studio executives who at least still have some idea of what people want. The pop singer is ineffective in offering edification. She will bring entertainment, elicit desire, become the subject of tabloids and fall into obscurity. Such is the wheel of fate.

But at least we still have books. I stopped at the mall, locked my bike and went into Chapters. I have a love-hate relationship with the chain. I was employed with them on several occasion but I was fired while working for the Victoria store. I usually feel sad when I enter, knowing these well-educated people are being paid minimum wage. Passing the history and sciences section, I smile, knowing there is some substance left in the world of non-fiction. 

As for most modern fiction, so little is worth reading. There is no modern Proust or Joyce or Kafka. They are read as classics, studied but the crap being published today is entirely mediocre and on the same level as Hollywood. If there is a genius out there, it is Michel Houellebecq. The Canadian authors published today offer historical escapes. It seems literary agents just love historical fiction. I become so disappointed walking through the local Chapters just to find another bestseller set in World War II. Come on... On top of that, the majority of chicklit out there makes me want to puke.

Is it any wonder genius is to difficult to find. Not to sound too sexist but women writers rarely appeal to me. They write about relationships, mother and daughter dribble and rarely do they become philosophical, rarely do they evolve their craft so as include thoughts on the times, offering ideas. I love Jane Austen, but she was a genius in her works. Anna Akhamtova too was a genius along with Ingborg Bachmann and Virginia Woolf. Why? Because they thought deeper. There is no depth in the majority of literature written by women. 

As for men, men don't seem to read as much fiction anymore. Who can blame them? They are most lost than women. The modern male wants a house, furniture, a good job to attract a mate. A man with money is more desirable. Why waste one's time with art and beauty? But as Desmond Morris once noted, men are more likely to become geniuses than women (on the flip-side, men are also more likely to become idiots and fools). 

We are seeing a lack of genius because men are no longer brave enough to search it out. From the digital distractions, globalization, lack of great jobs and careers, the modern male is constantly floundering, unable to create some substantial, whether a new theory or a work of a beauty. At best the man is at home playing video games or working long hours. If he is an academic, he is most likely doomed by his ego and his concerns for the trite, playing out his game of mental masturbation in front of lecture halls. If he cares for sports to bond he risks having relationships and encounters that have no meaning beyond the venue or focus of meeting. 

I left Chapters and went to a electronic store to pick up an MP3 player. I thought of the lonely rower on the waters of the Henley Regatta, her back to her future destination and myself, riding by on the bridge.  

Beauty and Its Wake

There is a line I have always loved in Victor Hugo's novel, Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la Mer): "Melancholy is the joy of being sad."

In the novel, Gilliat, a noble but modest fisherman dedicates himself to recovering the steam engine from a shipwrecked vessel off the Guernsey coast. The owner of the ship promises to whomever can bring back the said machine can have his niece, Durechette's hand in marriage. 

Gilliat has been in love with Durechette since she first wrote his name in the snow on the way home from church. Of course this should give the reader some indication of the novel's outcome. Like Hugo's other famed masterpiece, Paris de Notre-Dame (aka The Hunchback of Notre Dame), there is no happy ending. The protagonist takes on the quest but he is vanquished by the transience of human promises. 

The novel is classic and tragic because the character is doomed from the beginning. We relate to his quest (though the scenes wherein Hugo describes the method by which Gilliat recovers the steam engine can be tedious) and in the novel's final chapter, the hero resigns himself to his fate, letting the very sea he fought against take him to the next world. 

I wasn't so much haunted by the novel when I read it in my late teens,  more the ideas, the simplicity of the story. The joy of being sad resonated with me. Even to this day.

There's nothing like rain on a Sunday morning in August. I like it because it rains on the beaches where people might want to go. It rains on the soccer fields and playgrounds. It means people have to go inside themselves instead of escaping into the exterior where so much of life takes place. It means even the desolate can be beautiful.

And if we don't visit ourselves, or listen to quieter thoughts, television and other digital distractions won't help. The reason we are faced with harder things is because we refuse to see reality, to see how impenetrable and complex life is. Who hasn't returned from a terrible illness to fall in love with the mundane things one has previously overlooked? I also think of the oft quoted Tennyson remark of it being better in life to love and lose as opposed to never having the chance to love.

These thoughts have lead me to think that without beauty, there would be no melancholy. Why else would we feel down or lost? It means something momentous, something beautiful has come into our lives and passed on. Melancholy is the daily mourning for the greater episodes in life. 

In the wake of beautiful moments, we are left with the spreading absence. A song we love can be played over and over again. For some of us, songs imprint themselves, capturing the fragments of what we once felt. I can't listen to "All I Want Is You" by U2 without thinking of a blonde, Polish girl I knew when I was thirteen. And with the song's first few lines, summer evenings unfold in my thoughts, I can hear crickets, there are walks to the movies when the local mall had a theatre. I see her ahead of me, the flickering cascade of sunlight through the trees, the luxurious but wistful gasp of summer's first cooler winds. And maybe it is because of her I love short hair that curls around behind ears, it is her that makes me think another summer of her beauty is so impossible because she has passed and the time of being young, that young has moved on. 

The song becomes a comfortless surrogate. Words and music taking the place of moments, making the ephemeral seem less harsh. And for those song writers and singers, the very music they created came from the passing wake in which beauty had come and gone.

I am reminded of the Caurapañcāśikā by the 11th century Kasmiri poet, Bilhana (Chaurus in E. Powys Mather's rendition of the poem). According to legend, the young Brahman poet fell in love and had an affair with the king's daughter. The king looked down upon the union and imprisoned the poet. On the night before his execution, Bilhana wrote his famous work.

The fifty stanzas together create a tender kaleidoscope of love and its joys. The reader can see the lovers, their frolicking, their hours spent in bed. Bilhana describes the princess with such detail, from her citron-breast to the indent of her cheek, and her black eyes. He describes her feet then her anxiety the day he is captured. Then he goes on to write happily about books, the wise men he met, the learning he acquired. He also appreciates the mountains and the people he has seen in life, from fisherman to the men in the fields at harvest.

Even now 

If my girl with lotus eyes came to me again

Weary with the dear weight of young love,

Again I would give her to these starved twins of arms

And from her mouth drink down the heavy wine,

As a reeling pirate bee in fluttered ease

Steals up the honey from the nenuphar.

I can't think of a more solemn, more beautiful, more melancholy poem to read. Powys' translation, entitled 'Black Marigolds' makes every stanza wistful yet powerful and the depth of the poet's love resonates through the translation in a way others can't.

What makes his translation so strong and clear is the use of the words 'Even now' which take the place of the Sanskrit 'adyapi'. 'Even now' gives the English reader a sense of lament and retrospection as well as resignation, the poet's being ahead of all parting, to quote Rainer Maria Rilke.

The poem is the poet's last chance to give the world his art. It is beautiful in the way beauty can be complex, uncomfortable and grief stricken. Despite the sorrow, there is no anger nor regret in the poem which is why it transcends epochs and eras. Instead of wailing and grieving, using his words to smash at the prison walls, the poet has used his final words wisely. In short, the poem is a blessing, a forgiving, a benediction for what he has experienced and will soon lose. There is understanding and release by the end. 

It is strange to think that had a man lived, been given his freedom, would we have such a beautiful work of literature? In some traditions, the poem ends happily with the poet being freed. Others suggest that the king was so impressed with the young man's writing that he let him go free. 

But are these just lies to make it easier to love the story? Hollywood endings are preferred but they rarely deliver a sense of reality. In the contrived race to the airport, in the confession in front of a room of strangers, the hero always seems too heroic and oddly pathetic. Their words of love and regret become a deux ex machina, a 'god from the machine' to save the already nonsensical story. In real life people break up but they often sleep together and get back together and break up again. It isn't cold turkey - not always - and the melancholy knowledge that two people who try so hard but are not meant to stay together is too complex for most movie audiences.

And as a result most romantic comedies aren't really beautiful the way candy isn't nutritious. We take pleasure but there is a different pleasure in literature, in art, in great music and in universal stories. Instead of the fake comfort that dissolves in the rising theatre lights, we are in the presence of questions and stranger, sometimes unsettling feelings, eyes wet, heads shaking. For what its worth, it is familiar because it speaks to the universal in us all. Life is more intriguing and the enticing mystery unquiet but worth approaching when something stirs us away from the pre-fabricated. 

The romantic comedy I saw in my friends company, my Polish girl nearby, is not memorable. But I remember the walk home, her hand to her hair, the barking of a dog beyond a white fence and the closing lips of night. When I went to a different high school than her, we rarely saw each other again but I read Toilers of the Sea, listened to U2 and discovered 'Black Marigolds'. From out of the wake of her beauty came my longing to understand other aspects of beauty, to be closer to beauty because there was a large part of me afraid of what might happen had I pursued her.

In some ways I think I love beauty more philosophically than the surface reality. I think I've fallen in love once and since then, I rarely meet beauty that matches the beauty I find in great conversations and the generosity of others. I am blessed with many wondrous moments and people I encounter and continue to know. And in the the absence of beauty I have moved on into the pursuit to find it elsewhere, in art, in dreams and ideas. With the sadness of its passing, another catalyst for understanding, appreciating, and sometimes, letting go.

For Plato, we begin with many beautiful bodies to love until eventually we focus on beauty itself. We love Beauty. In truth, it will lead us to the Good.

I don't think I can argue with that.

Dreams, Expectations and Perennial Melancholy

Honoré de Balzac, French novelist of the nineteenth century and author of the vast Human Comedy, once wrote that 'disappointments measure how great our hopes once were'. His numerous works often illustrate this very point, from the young provincial going to the big city with dreams of being a literary sensation (Lost Illusions) to the young law student witnessing the greed and depravity of those surrounding him in the heart of Bourbon Restoration Paris in which social climbing through deceit and marriage is the only way to become successful (Père Goriot).

In addition to disappointment, there is the theme of disillusionment, the finding out that things are not what they seem and the little of the world that is black and white reveal only a removed prison from the gray that evolves and warps and undermines one's perception of the world. The idea that there is no place to stand in this world, that wherever we are is prone to change, erosion and the this too shall pass of Biblical implication is the only constant. The platitude that the only guarantee is there are no guarantees has offered little comfort but remains a nagging truth.

Balzac was an early influence on my ideas and how I regarded the world. I read his novels in my late teens and early twenties and though I have not returned to his works, I still feel his stories resonate in my own life. And it's not that I experience perennial disillusionment or constant disappointment, it's just for every endeavour relying upon hope and expectation there is a balance. Balzac's characters recover and learn and though bruised and sullied, corrupted they persevere despite the emptiness they encounter in the world of humankind, an emptiness made stronger with its institutions of marriage, bureaucracy and church. 

Though they don't succeed at first, they find their appropriate paths and depending on their character sink or rise though its often a question of perception. In our world, money, a house, time to travel and kids are the accoutrements of success and the hope for them a solemn reminder of how much of our lives is determined by what others expect of us.

For these so-called successes often act as weights and in the instance of the individual who makes money he or she is often chained to his or her work (once I overheard a cell phone conversation in which a middle-aged man,  most likely a business man said "You know Tom, it's how it is. You have money and there's no time but if you have time, than you probably don't have money"). 

And yes, there's the model home, a house to be envied but time isn't kind and with all its passing reveals new repairs that need to be made and remodeling that need to be undertaken. Our lives are tormented by fashion and trends - we are afraid of being left behind, being outdated.

Travel is good but as Stoic philosopher Seneca once noted there is no escape from who you are despite where you are (or to put in succinctly in the words of Mr. Brady in the film adaptation, "Wherever you go, there you are").

And as for children, I routinely encounter young mothers who long for an hour of free time. They have their little ones and take special pride in their role as parents but there is a sadness hidden in the creases below their eyes. They dreamed of becoming a mother, their mothers asked them when they would become mothers and suddenly, they are and their other, more personal dreams have been placed aside.

And this is where I wander into philosophy when I ask what is the difference between what we dream and what we expect? And by dreaming, not what we do every night but what we strive for or believe is the rightful place we are meant for. 

There is the dream of having money and the expectation of what it will bring. The dream is fulfilled and sadly, there is no time. 

The dream of a new house but the happy house owner recovers from the honeymoon of ownership excitement and the expectation becomes a new bill to pay, a mortgage hanging over one's head like the sword of Damocles. 

Travel to escape but there is the weariness of travel and the longing to stay in the places we believe are more beautiful than ours. 

The dream of children, the longing to see our blood and lineage carried on, the joy and miracle of child birth but then the duality of expectation ensues. The new parent is expected to raise the child and the expectation of being fulfilled never arises. 

Perhaps this is why I side with pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and writers like Honoré de Balzac. We begin naive but then it's only a matter of time before we realize that all we want has no meaning and will not bring us complete happiness. Shards of happiness and excitement are scattered here and there but desire has only taken us to the next desire and the satisfaction of one thing leads us to a newer void, a new hunger to satiate. 

Perhaps this is why I hate listening to the radio because music is only a brief distraction from the constant barrage of advertisements. There is no serenity it the voices that try to remind us we are not anything until we buy this or that product (and god do I despise the numerous radio disc jockies with their over-the-top enthusiasm for things crass and useless like clubs you have to go to and concerts you should attend... fuck off...)

For Schopenhauer, resignation from the will, the driver behind all desire is the only answer. For other thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, living the good life, a life free of akrasia (i.e. not being able to control of command yourself) is the best solution. If the desire is deadly or painful, don't fulfill it and be happy with your decision to detach yourself from the dark yearning. 

And I do believe perception is a large part of attaining happiness. For myself, I think happiness is a fleeting event in one's emotions. Disillusionment follows when we believe happiness should be our constant state. There is the climax of a reward or a gift. A wedding is a day of happiness but it's only one day. The birth of a child or a promotion is a cause for celebration and feeling elated and high only lasts for so long before diapers need changing and more hours need to be put in at the office.

We are happy but then we come back down. And being down where we usually are isn't a bad thing. Inspired by my mother, I have come to believe that melancholy is our default state of being. But here I must stress, I don't completely associate melancholy with depression. I would argue that melancholy has a spectrum ranging from just below joy - that place in our minds and emotions where things need to be done and the quiet resignation of accepting the work and upkeep is paramount to persevering - to the sadness and disquiet one might experience when one is alone and there is no respite from the solemn thoughts of life, death and the perennial passing of time. 

There is no drug to heal the melancholy because we need it, it is very the home we return to after fooling around with happiness and joy. There is a contentment to melancholy, a pleasantness along with a gravitas. The fact that we push ourselves to smile is a sign of senility and sickness. A smile is a commodity of the customer service industry and I tire of the belief that it is necessary to help sell products based on the idea that it will ease one's mind and heart when there is no ease.

It is wonderful to dream but equally wonderful to bless the melancholy of daily life (and again, think of the spectrum of melancholy and not its traditional association with depression and down-ness). The beauty of dreaming is kind so long as we don't expect it to fulfill voids or hungers or nullify the perennial state of our getting-by in life. A dream that doesn't come to light is not a failure. Dreams aren't always successes in one's heart. I think we make up these expectations that something awaits us and will relieve us of this burden of being human. The damage of disappointments and disillusionment is a result of the ridiculous expectations we place on being alive.

We are all meant to die. It's the way it is. Being dead won't hurt but life will be over. Whatever dreams we had won't matter and the expectations will finally be purged. I feel the key to  making life good is enjoying the melancholy, finding peace in the aftermath of happiness. I distrust happiness not because it lies but because we lie to ourselves about its importance. The only hope we should have is seeing how petty our illusions and beliefs about life are. Whatever is grandiose should be immediately distrusted.

The Tractor Beam and the Fear of Loneliness

Growing up, I would often wonder why my parents still lived together. I never saw any sign of affection, they didn't hold hands nor kiss with any kind of love or tenderness. It was like watching two strangers live together, so little in common beyond having kids and a mutual history. They went to the same high school for a year, knew the same people growing up. When my mother returned from her West Coast travels, my aunt re-introduced them after a soccer match. 

I know in some way my mother wanted security and my father represented that. And in turn, my father wanted a rebel, someone different from the women he had met, someone different to help distinguish him from his brothers and sisters who had all married very staid people. 

And so they forged this marriage and it lasted twenty years. But they realized you can't love a representation. Masks are mislaid or re-painted and over time, my father began to rebel against my mother and my mother, tired of the suffocating security, realizing it had made her a prisoner, looked for love elsewhere. The marriage crumbled slowly, they kept up appearances but my brother and I both witnessed the fighting, the unhappiness, the strain. My brother and I were in a way divided as I sided with my mother and he my father. (Thankfully, in our adulthood, we are more open to both our parents and see them and love them for them as opposed to a 'side' to pick.)

When they separated at first, I wasn't angry but I was. I said it was about time - my exact words -  but I was bothered they couldn't have done it earlier. I hated my adolescence and having your parents split apart during the rockiest years of your own growth, doesn't give you a firm foothold in the world. 

But I continued to study them, watch them in the wake of their dying unity. And in turn, their lessons have become my lessons. The question of love and how to love never leaves me because there have been occasions where I almost followed in their footprints.

In one instance, just turned twenty, newly home from B.C. I met a woman who worked at a local print and frame shop. How we met? I just went in to drop off my resume. We ended up talking for about two hours about books, poetry, painting and music. The next time I dropped by, I suggested we go for coffee. She was pretty but I was more attracted to our conversation. I didn't have a lot of friends at the time and wanted to be wanted. And here was my chance. 

It started out as a kind of friendship that fell into a relationship that fell back into a friendship only to get more complicated by becoming a relationship again... all in the course of four months. She was the first woman whose body I explored. I had seen women naked in strip joints and the magazines my father stored on the top shelf of his closet. But here was a naked woman, in my presence, under my hands. And I kept telling myself, you're only attracted to her being attracted to you. The desire to see her naked, to kiss her became a kind of addiction but when we went out in public, I couldn't hold her hand, ashamed of myself for not being honest with both of us about how I truly felt. 

The sexual chemistry was there but my attraction was based solely on what I have come to call the 'tractor beam'. With this woman, I was responding to her, reacting to her affection as opposed to being stimulated by my need and longing for her. The attraction wasn't mutual. During our time together, whether kissing or fooling around, a part of me felt like it was floating around, watching the scenes unfold. Kissing her, I felt this pity for myself because I wasn't going after what I truly wanted. I was settling. 

Of course, it had to end. After a day trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake, walking downtown, holding her hand, I knew I was being a fraud. We broke up the next day, quickly and painlessly though a part of my regretted it. I know I made the right decision and hoped something better would come along.

The 'tractor beam' didn't affect me until many years later. Dating fell by the way side due to being ill for so long - just getting through a day was an ordeal. But when I started to consider the opposite sex again, I either met the unrequited, the hard-to-get type or the 'tractor beam'. This occurred when I was living out west. I met a young lady in a continuing education class. We hit it off as friends and hung out. But I started picking up mixed messages. If we were friends, how come she made an effort to emphasize her cleavage? She also seemed incredibly sympathetic about everything I talked about. At times, it seemed I could do no wrong. 

Then one night I suggested we become friends with benefits. No, that wouldn't do for and it was like I offended her.

Shortly after that, I invited her over for dinner. We drank a full bottle of wine, watched half of a movie together. She said she had to leave and the tractor beam took over. 

Maybe it was just seeing her go, spending another night alone in my bed that made everything less real to me. Of course she was pretty - she's very attractive, brown eyes, nice cheeks, a soft voice - but I wasn't in love nor felt the hunger for her beyond the sexual and basic need of comfort. 

Throughout our time that evening, I kept telling her I wanted to be her boyfriend and that we could work it out. But I was lying to myself and her and the friendship which had briefly become a relationship only barely recovered in the weeks thereafter. Waking up the next morning, I regretted my advancement to her - though she had given me enough cues and hints that would have tormented any sane, single man with sexual yearning - and wrote her an email that morning.... I should have waited though. Receiving my email, she left work emotionally destroyed. Angry emails found their way in my inbox and we didn't speak for two months. 

When we re-met, she had found someone else...

And I suppose, I'm writing this now because I'm concerned it might be happening again. I've met someone recently, enjoyed our conversation but I don't see her as the kind of woman I want. She's had her trials, her disappointments and it's true, there's something fascinating about her but fascination isn't love (nor is infatuation which is kind of a sad obsession). 

And it's one of those things where if I go somewhere, I seem to keep meeting her. I feel the quiet tragedy build up and pray for the strength to avoid any miscommunication or moment of weakness. It makes me wonder if most people are together simply because they are afraid of the loneliness that surrounds them. Working in a winery, I see couples come in everyday and I wonder what percentage are happy or just merely content. Many appear to be doing well, or maybe they've been drinking wine and wine makes everything lovely and everyone lovelier. Maybe people need a little bit of blindness to care for the person sleeping beside them. 

And so it is, I'm tired of this pattern I've fallen for - actually several times... though for the sake of brevity, I'll leave writing about them for another occasion. At least having this post I can come back to it, read my thoughts, hopefully avoid my next disappointment with myself. These words are my own testament and having written them will no doubt sustain my awareness, reminding me not to be weak but strong in my approach. I've been lonely before but I would rather be on my own than be with someone I have no honest affection for.

This I can truly state.

Interpreting 'Cornerstone' by the Arctic Monkeys

My brother first introduced me to the song 'Cornerstone' by the Arctic Monkeys. The initial listen was preceded by this encapsulating explanation: a man, perhaps young, is going around at night finding different girls who all resemble his ex-girlfriend. In each encounter, he asks these female look-a-likes if he can call them her name. By the end of the song, alone, desolate, the narrator wanders into the 'Cornerstone' to find his lost love's sister, on 'the phone to the middle man' and in a moment of grace, the sister allows him to call her 'anything [he] wants'.

Since that rudimentary listen, I've tuned into the song umpteen times, fascinated with the hero's journey involved as much as the pop sensibilities of the band's music. One would think the song was mulled over and built like a story but according to Alex Turner, the band's lead singer/guitarist and main songwriter, the song was written quickly and in the morning. 

But as with many brilliant pieces of music or poetry, there is something intuitive that arrives when artists are most vulnerable. And being a writer, poet and songwriter myself, I find the morning the most natural time to compose because one is fresh from sleep and only emerging from the flurry of dreams. There are no inhibitions, no dominating thought beyond the feeling of being half-way between night and day.

The song 'Cornerstone' gives one a sense of that borderland, the liminal state. Like the hero's journey I mentioned above, the narrator is on search. What I find the most fascinating is that every locale, from the 'Battleship' to the 'Rusty Hook' and 'Parrot's Beak' each have a certain pirate if not sea-faring theme. We get the impression the narrator is 'at sea', at a loss, cast off. And in the first place or what we assume to be a club he sees a girl that looks like his lost love under 'the warning light' (perhaps an allusion to lights used in vessels under attack). She is a 'vision trick', a play in the eyes and the narrator is foolish enough to approach and ask her if he can her 'your name'. 

From this first verse, the listener realizes the narrator is addressing the eternal you and we are immediately taken in. It is a love song but far from typical in presentation. The genius of this song lies in the descriptions, the places he goes and the three different girls before he meets the sister at the song's end.

Take for instance the second verse in the 'Rusty Hook' where he approaches a girl 'huddled up in a wicker chair.'

I wandered over for a closer look

Kissed whoever was sitting there

She was close, and she held me very tightly,

Til I asked her awfully politely

'Please can I you her name.'

Building on his story, the first verse illustrates the narrator in a comical situation. By the second, we realize his obsession and subsequently begin to feel more compassion. What makes the second verse all-the-more poignant is that for a brief, fleeting moment, the past is recaptured. The girl opens her arms to him, he once again experiences an instance in which his loss disappears. Here it is, he can almost be happy again yet he opens his mouth, making his polite request to give this new girl the name of the one loved and lost. 

The chorus, repeated twice opens with two brilliant lines: I elongated my lift home/I let him go the long way round. Here, we get the impression he is in a taxi, on his way to who knows where but he doesn't want to get there fast enough. He wants to slow down. He smells her scent on the seat belt and the aroma alone, tantalizing and bittersweet, keeps him from instructing the cab drive on the best short cuts. Again, he is recapturing the ghost of his lost love, albeit in a fragrance. The past, a mere impression, haunts the narrator but he is determined.

In the third verse, there is a claustrophobic if not destructive element. He is in the 'Parrot's Beak' and the third template of his lost love is playing with the smoke alarm. The club is loud, the girl has a broken arm and the walls are wet, giving the impression the girl has successfully triggered the building's sprinkler system.

Despite having the use of one arm, the young woman spells out using a Letraset that 'no, you can't call me her name'.


Letraset is a UK-based company that produces markers and other artistic publishing products. It could be she is using the traditional manufacturing sheet of transferable lettering or one of the writing tools produced by the company. Considering the girl in the third verse is using a Letraset writing tool, we can safely assume she is a creative person, whether in graphic design or marketing or maybe even a graffiti artist considering the prank she is pulling off.

The narrator is unsettled by this third encounter, disconsolate, even questioning his own reality. In the bridge portion of the song, he wants to know where his lost love is hiding, worried he will forget her face. To me, this might even suggest he is falling for girls that may resemble aspects of her personality as opposed to appearance. If his memory of her looks is dissolving, then we know he is only looking for the comfort of the past, its name. Her name. In other words, the narrator only desires the feeling of being in his previous relationship for how could he forget the face if he has spent the entire evening mistaking all these girls for his lost love?

By this point, we return to the chorus, the long cab ride, haunted by the scent. The listener must now wonder: is it the same cab or is he following her, hoping to get a final scent in this sacred backseat? If the former, is he asking the driver to wait outside each locale? And in the case of the latter, is his lost love just one step ahead?


Whenever I hear 'Cornerstone', I am reminded of Rainer Maria Rilke poem that begins with 'Du, im voraus/verlorne Geliebte, Nimmergekommene' which roughly translates into, "You, just ahead/lost beloved, the Never-to-come-one' or as Stephen Mitchell brilliants interprets as "You who never arrived". In the said poem, the narrator feels he is following the wake of his 'verlorne Geliebte', that everywhere he goes, he is reminded he is always one step behind and will never catch up to her.

...An open window

In the country house – and you nearly

Stepped out pensively to meet me. Streets I found

You had just passed,

And sometimes the mirrors in the merchant shops,

Still spinning from your reflection became startled

By my unexpected presence (my translation)

The 'Cornerstone' narrator experiences the same wistful hopelessness as Rilke's and we get a sense of the bittersweet in the poignant piano solo that acts as a kind of prelude to the final verse. The music feels like raindrops on a car rooftop, the flicker of lights through a windshield, maybe even the melodic tears of the narrator in his hapless silence.

Thankfully, hope springs eternal and things are always closer to resolve following the bleak and bitter. The narrator wanders into a 'Cornerstone'. The name, ironically, is derived from a counseling centre in the Arctic Monkey's hometown of Sheffield, South Yorkshire in Northern England. In the song, we may assume it is another club or perhaps a play on the words corner store. Either way, the sister is by herself and the narrator feels she will understand his predicament. 

She was close - you couldn't get much closer

She said I'm not really supposed to but yes,

Call me anything you want. 

The song closes, the journey ends but an attentive listener will always have questions. If he dated this lost love and then finds himself in the company of her sister, does that mean he was always looking for her? If throughout the song he found templates of his ex, does this resolve indicate he is finding peace or is he again lost in the rapture of repeating the past? 

The sister, especially, intrigues me. I assume she is as compassionate as the listener. We already identify with him by the first verse as we see things through his perspective. We want him to be happy because we want to be happy in our relationships. In a sense the sister is a surrogate but also sanctuary and with her acquiescence the song closes only with more questions but the listener is released from his anxiety concerning the narrator. The sister (like a sister of mercy) will take care of him; we are relieved. Judging by her reaction to his plea, perhaps she is acquainted with his sensibilities and attitudes. Like a nurse in a psyche ward, she is familiar with his psychosis. Perhaps she is even used to him and has long expected this - for how else would the narrator have predicted she would comprehend his situation and open his arms to him?

Ultimately, the sister goes beyond the previous girls in that she knows what she is getting into. The first girl was simply a trick of the eyes; the second may have been amorous, kissing this new stranger but unwilling to play his game while the third was a trickster, up to no good. The sister is the climax of the tale, the deus ex machina for how else could such a wonderful song end? 

The sister is also 'your sister', the ex's sister and because the song is addressed to the eternal and elusive 'you', 'the she' behind all his solemn and scattered behavior, the sister is like another pawn.

The listener has enjoyed the journey but the sister (again 'your sister') must put up with the narrator, in a sense - when we think of the title - become his counselor. 

The ending can only allude to the suddenness and illusion of happy endings. The narrator hasn't found what he is looking for (or maybe he has if we consider he was always looking for the sister, his ex being a simple prelude) nor has he recaptured time. There is a significant element of failure here. What he will attain from his relationship with the sister is unknown. But judging by his behavior, he will go on unsatisfied, unsettled, his desire tormenting him. 

He is lost, the you he was looking for is no where to be seen, stilling hiding but the evening's journey is thankfully over. 

The song ends and rests with his rest.

The Winter of Summer, The Summer of Winter

I openly admit the winter of 2010/11 was a rough one - I ended up in the ditch outside of work one morning, hitting a patch of ice and sliding into the embankment, but that's another story - but I'm strangely sad to see it go. 

No... I shouldn't say 'strange'... this is normal for me, this different kind of melancholy watching the snowy days recede.

Many people look forward to spring and summer. There is the burst of blooming colours -  barren trees beautifully sprinkled with white and pink blossoms - along with the eagerness and energy to meet the longer days, to walk over the green grass, to see the bare arms and legs of strollers pass, pale but tanning in the sunshine.

Spring and summer are certainly wondrous seasons. Life re-emerges, almost miraculous from the cocoon first laid by autumn leaves and the subsequent quiet walls of winter. People can't wait to get into their gardens - my mother included. People can't wait for the beach, kids can't wait for the summer holidays - so much 'can't wait, can't wait' as so many are looking forward to summer sports.  Hockey dads are active in winter, what would summer moms do without soccer? There is a certain raison d'etre, I'm sure, involved in little league games, in carting around swarms of tiny sports enthusiasts, their bodies buzzing with sugar and enthusiasm.

But for me, I have no kids, so there's no responsibility there. I don't have a garden - though I would like to someday (but that's a kind of lie I want to believe in). I'm also not a sports enthusiast. I could care less about beach volley ball. I like watching soccer on television with my father because he has an excellent memory for players, team stats that bring a new dimension to the game. 

Overall, I'm an introvert and though I work in an environment where I showcase extrovert tendencies  (I'm a tour guide at a winery, a rather entertaining one on a good day) I prefer Fall and Winter because the seasons suggest a time of solace for my inner sensibilities.

And that's just it Spring and Summer are about opening up, sharing, showing, revealing which extroverted people tend to do by being exuberant and social in large gatherings. These latter two seasons are by 'nature' (and no pun intended) gregarious. People sit on patios in the summer, the crowds come and go under sunny skies. Though people read at the beach, they are not slugging around battered copies of War and Peace. We have beach books because people want something mindless to read while they are mindlessly sunbathing. It's just the way it works.

Spring and Summer are times when everything comes to the surface after resting in the chthonic layers of Fall and Winter. As the grass becomes greener and the April rainfall falls away revealing bluer skies, I have to ask myself, like the German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, in his famous poem, Abendfantasie (Evening Fantasy) Wohin denn ich? Where then do I go?

In the poem, the poet looks around him. The ploughman sits peacefully after a day of hard work. Sailors are welcomed into town by the church bells. Friends and family have places to go, people gather in the market, in their homes. Where is the poet meant to be, distant, alone, far from the crowd? 

I relate to Hölderlin because I have been asking myself that very question even before I read his poem in my early twenties. I have been asking that question every April.

In Fall and Winter, solitude is acceptable. We as human beings pull away from a world that is no longer warm or hospitable. The days are shorter and evening's darkness haunts our drives home, our dinner hours. Fall and Winter - the time when students are busy pouring over their books, when War and Peace must come out and be tackled for lack of anything better to read. It's hard to read something cheery and flighty when it isn't cheery outside.

Winter especially... that feeling of waking up, the chill, the longing to stay in bed but then, just through the windows, the scintillating but sullen blue of snowy mornings waiting to be breathed in. The scent of chilled cheeks, that blustery redness like a blush, so beautiful on the faces of pretty girls. Winter, with the hypnotic drone of windshield wipers and that sense we are living somewhere between a half-forgotten memory and a sleep-laden reality. Snow heavy on the lids of windows sills, snow on the roofs of churches. The world of Winter telling us to dream and wonder, even if the bare branches appear slightly nightmarish like bones torn from their flesh. 

Now here comes Spring and Summer and a part of me is asking myself, what now? How am I going to act and relate to people who, by reading the above paragraph would consider me a candidate for  anti-depressants. I don't care for the beach. I like patios but it's not going to be the death of me if I don't get to one right away. 

Wohin denn ich? I feel a little naked about this time, threatened (yes, 'threatened') by the warmer days because I know my solitude shows up, is readily seen. Though I like being social, I've never been that party guy, that social guy that knows everybody. And I've gotten to that point where I just don't care if I'll ever get a girlfriend... (yes, probably my problem right, this guy needs to lighten up...)

I suppose it really comes down to that feeling that Spring and Summer also represent things I would like but because of my predisposition, my biography, I'll never really have. There's a part of me that wishes I could lie on a beach and do nothing but read bestseller novels or spend an entire day drinking beer on a patio, listening to a band. But that's just it, I would feel I'm wasting time. And I'm not saying others are wasting time, it's just that's what they want and need. The way that the cool kids needed to hang around in circles on the play ground and do nothing but give you, you the outsider, the impression they had something going on. That longing to be the cool kid still resonates in me but it's so badly misplaced I have to shake my head. The cool kids are really the most boring people in my mind but what I'm not equally fascinates me for the fact I can't be it and if  I tried, I'd deny what makes me unique. 

And I've often wondered what I will be in the person, the being that will have someone. In my own fantasies of love and relationships, I don't see the person I am but this 'other' who goes to the beach, is social, has a large group of friends, etc... But he isn't real, there is no grounding to his life, the way a fantasy is merely a cultivated counterpoint to balance with our daily lives.

Spring and Summer represent 'the other' I'll never know, this counterpoint. The person I could be if I loved these two seasons wouldn't be the person writing this. You won't find me on a beach with a volley ball. I prefer a beach when the leaves are falling, when tanned steroid strutters are no where to be seen eye-balling a set of bimbos.

The poet in his Evening Fantasy looks further, up to the purple clouds where there is a Spring blooming - his Spring being a peace, a haven. He asks himself, why is the sting of restlessness always effecting him.

I know it affects me. I'd rather be doing something than not. Fall and Winter help motivate me, Spring and Summer are all about indulgence, superficiality, reminding me of People magazine and Cosmopolitan covers with bikini-clad celebrities - people offering us only the vacuity of entertainment. That is Spring and Summer for me. It's life in North American society which has yet to appreciate the deeper and finer things because it has yet to cultivate them. 

In the main and to best summarize: Summer for me is what Winter is like for the extroverted ones, 'the others'. I suppose I have to accept this. They got through the Winter, it's my turn to get through the Summer.