China Blues (5 page)

around the elbow, some surreal flaw to defeat.

                                                              What’s

the difference to us if the person on a stamp

is occasionally Belgian,

or the landmark might be Dutch, for that matter,

as long as it’s significant. I would like to see Grand Canyon

& Smashed Head Buffalo Jump on some of the 2¢ or 5¢ stamps,

make them large, okay

buddy, with good colours, bright dusty roses & hot yellows,

they cost enough, go ahead. We need indigenous images also,

so now, in 1992, this is a good time to put Tomson Highway

on a stamp. Or it’s not too late for Pierre Trudeau

on the 10¢ stamp in a black G-string trying to look sexy

& articulate. Or how about a real honest-to-god working girl

from Detroit, brown-skinned, short black skirt,

no fist in the air, just staring right out at you.

Those

     eyes. Level.

If you’re going to put a stamp on an envelope –

why not put something on it with guts?

           When you walk into The Liberty

one of the waitresses gives you a big hug & finds you a table

where you can sit & order the Cab Sauvignon

which costs about 16 or 17 a bottle

                                               & you can relax

with your elbows on the table & lower your head

into a pool of interesting tidbits of gossip –

a story about a new arts group, a juicy bit about a

well-known columnist who has left for Mexico. And

you can tell
your
stories – go ahead

it’s all here like a chic Kingdom Hall. But

I think I usually like the bar scene itself

better than the specific stories.

                                        The clear dark

light & the voices rising & falling & the smells

of Japanese chicken & cinnamon & Thai noodles

are pleasantly interrupted by a variety

of interesting faces, a girl with wonderful breasts,

a fey young kid he looks suburban apparently has

something to do with money & he looks hot

he keeps snapping his galluses wide yellow ones.

Everyone has a different kind of sugar

or coke. I don’t

need anything more than this to get back up.

            The summer weather up here is terrific.

There are green peas & snap beans to pick over at

Panharget Farms sometimes in the afternoon,

                                                             the students

in my workshop group are really bright as clean shiny

new nails,

           the after-supper summer light is lovely,

but, I admit, there isn’t very much to do

in the evenings.

            I was watching a
PBS
science program

½ an hour ago, but

                        you know, I don’t really give a

flying copulative verb about quasars. I think

the meaning of meaning

                               is what you have

before you begin to think about – What It is.

Pagliarullo

hit a brilliant slow inside pitch for a quick single

& this
monzer
the size of a tank came down the base

line & gloved it just in time. Tough.

                                                But

Pagliarullo hits some nice balls out of the park.

             I’m still hungry; it’s amazing how a dumb white male

like myself with several published books

& an exhaustive knowledge of contemporary history

can make a sandwich in the dark without any problems.

I think it’s something I inherit from one of my aunts.

I buttered the whole wheat bread & put a little salt

on the rare roast beef Lilly

brought me from Schomberg.

                                      While I was making

the sandwich I watched the darkness out

in the backyard.

                  There is something very comfortable

about rural darkness at the end of a long day –

up at 6 a.m., lots of bright sunshine, 78–82°,

4 meetings with students, 2 new poems,

lunch at the German Delicatessen

across from the library. I think it’s

the completeness; darkness in the city

doesn’t have that completeness

& of course it doesn’t have the late-night hawks

& Toronto full moons don’t seem to be even

½ as large.

           So after the sandwich & a piece

of homemade pie I picked up my jacket

just in case it gets cool

& went for a walk down the hill over the Boyne

River bridge for a late-night drink at Oliver’s.

And again it was this comfortable, like a favourite

blanket from childhood my old buffalo robe perhaps,

quality of the darkness – not disturbed or diluted

with city sounds or traffic, & full of odd nudges

from the past – walking over Trout Creek Bridge

in St. Mary’s for after-supper ice cream with my parents,

or that night in Galt when my crazy stepfather

tried to jump off the Grand River Bridge

at Victoria & Water Street.

                                 Peaceful,

just the darkness, a few late-night hawks.

2 or 3 passing cars, bridges as calm as sculpture,

& the shimmer of dark wet rural grass.

for Jan Conn

            I have been thinking about Philadelphia

all afternoon, about trains and newspapers,

about gas stations,

about a job I used to have in a mill on River Street.

I sit around with my friends in the evening

and we talk about the same things, literature, politics,

sex, the Van Gogh exhibit at the
AGO
,

                                                but why is it

that I am the only one who thinks there should be

a train to Philadelphia every morning,

                                                  O say,

around 7:45 a.m. would be good?

                                            Or who misses

the sense of Philadelphia in the autumn,

and how it stands for something even in the middle

of a cold dark January afternoon?

            This is unfair, especially when you

consider that a year ago the central part of the city

was a sea of flames.

                        There is a myth that encloses

all these things and I am susceptible to that myth. I

phone Sam, and we go out for coffee & chocolate cake,

and then we take a cab out to the Danforth,

go to Esperides and have squid fried in a light batter

and sweet roast lamb with large golden brown potatoes.

The food is good

and Esperides is a warm room. Even the darkness

of the Danforth late at night

by itself fulfills something deep and important in me.

Still, even out on the warm dusky street,

hanging loose after supper,

our cheap dress shirts pulled loose out of our pants

because of the heat,

                        it is my perception

that something is not quite right. Even the marvellous

new Hydro building by Raymond Moriyama

at University & College is not as appreciable

– unless you put it into a frame:

Sherbourne Street, for example, and Philadelphia,

and that building we saw by Philip Johnson in Chicago.

          How will

I describe the darkness of Wrigley Field at night

& how people turn to each other

after a great hit & say, Did you see that?

                                                     Or the popular song

that keeps running through my head, “Your daddy’s rich

& your momma is so good-looking.”

                                                The darkness

is a soft ½darkness,

The light falls on his blond moustache

& makes his eyes bluer, midwestern, cornflower

blue. He is with his wife

& one child, a boy; his wife’s name is Serena,

Lebanese descent, beautiful, the other child, 4,

also a boy, is at home.

                            I am

by myself for a week; Mitch Williams –

                                                     not the

Bad Boy of postmodern baseball, I have seen him

in bars once or twice, tall, slim, good-looking,

laughing a lot; I would be more inclined

to call him the Iconic Hot-dog, in the Barthian sense,

of postmodern Chi City –

                                is pitching, it’s the 8th

& he’s holding a slender 3–2 lead & keeping them

hitless & witless. I am never lonely

when I meet people like this. His wife’s eyes

& the quick way she has of laughing nervously

but with pleasure at an unexpected play

make our small pool of order a warm place

& the beer tastes that much better. “Throw the

fast ball throw the fast ball Mitch,”

chants his 9-year-old son. I say, “He’s going

to hit him with the sinker,”

                                  & he does, he throws

the heavy ball with a lot of thumb behind it –

drops it in under the amazed batter’s knees

to get the last out;

                      & he himself, always the clown,

a tall slim good-looking guy who laughs a lot

in the bars,

            is bent so far over after the pitch

that he’s almost like a crab –

                                      legs stretched out

glove in the air, right hand fingertips touching

the dust in front of him, eyes locked

at that exact point where he placed the ball. They

are all on their feet yelling for him

& I am glad. I like this field better in some

ways than the huge cement skydome with its giant

retractable clamshell helicopter-focused roof. But

it is also those blue midwestern eyes

that say, “Comeon, relax, forget it, you’re at home.”

& Williams, of course, because he’s such a fabulary

extrovert. What else can I say?

                                       I am sitting

right in front of you. My hands are folded

on the formica table, relaxed, at ease. Every thing

in the world should be this simple.

                                               What

can I tell you that      you don’t already know?

           Amy Tan is one of the most gorgeous new

American writers presently at work. What I like

best about her work is its effortlessness, the way one detail

leads with a completely natural grace to

another detail about a young girl’s choice of wardrobe

for travel. She has stories, in other words,

a number of stories contained

within a single box perhaps a white cardboard shoebox

sitting beside another shoebox that still contains

wrapped in white tissue paper of the kind you get in stores,

a pair of glossy red shoes. The stories are on loose

sheets, they are not bound together by an obtuse plotline;

rather, they have so much in common

that they simply touch on each other & develop their own

persuasion.

            The work I am up to my elbows in at present is more

centred. Tom’s story, with Tom, even indirectly,

as the constant centre of reference; and the world,

like innumerable photographs, swirls at one or another

speed or F-stop in Tom’s camera.

                                            So Tan’s work,

listening to her read from
The Kitchen God’s Wife
, is more

than good art or refreshing. I am actually liberated

by watching her concentrate on the good stuff, the fresh peas,

yellow corn, soft petalled artichokes,

& she casually throws the husks over her shoulder. The

beans & the corn are as fresh as if it had just rained.

Ontario is gorgeous in the summer. Northern lake fish like sturgeon are flown directly to the coast. With daisies in their mouths. We have a lot of manufacturing lay-offs, and more unemployed Phds than you can count. > Caribbean shrimps are supposed to be better than the ones from Louisiana, tastier, the man says, eat them in 2 big bites and suck the last sweet bit right out of its shell. > A pink elephant by Tom Thomson floats past on a street parade, Kate talks about some Steiglitz photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe. > We are sitting around a long table against the morning glory yellow wall at Britoli’s, Frank and Paulo have their arms around each other’s shoulders reviewing baseball, the bread is good, Carol is reading a letter to someone from her friend in Amsterdam. > Red Hot Chili Peppers are still a zany and classy group, this thing they have about playing with their dicks hanging out of their pants is wild. O’Keeffe’s desert flowers are great. Innovative musicians, sure; but maybe a tad too aggressive. > We’re splashing wine and eating soup. There are about 9 films out of 75 in Toronto at the moment that are worth seeing. > There are 100s of problems in the world. More. There are millions. People don’t solve problems so much as they respond to challenges. > Paulo turns down a piece of chocolate raspberry mousse cake. We have all the elements we need. We are in the process of discovering a package. > Well, something more radical than warehouse sound or wide lapel suits. Caribbean shrimps are supposed to be better than the ones from Louisiana, tastier, the man says, eat them in 2 big bites.