More Sad

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The firing

of bullets and dropping of bombs 

is a familiar cruelty

on TV screens

these days

why do I feel more sad

for the businessman I see 

in his office? This man of habit, craven 

and long past the age of retirement

in his glassed-in corner, hunched over his desk

barely moving

like a pet turtle who couldn't outgrow his tank;

his days should be devoted 

to pastoral pleasures or culture,

playing golf or learning to abstract paint,

but there's nothing left to express,

no inner reserves from which to draw

inspiration, the only occasional rise he gets

is fist-pounding rage

when company sales are down, 

or the value of his portfolio plummets.

He's ditched the suit and tie, 

I'll give him that, can't stay home, 

can't stand his wife nor she him,

(on that they agree) so he

still comes to the office every day,

arrives at 7 and sits there until lunchtime,

reads emails, circles letters 

in the daily Wonder Word upwards 

downwards backwards forwards 

and fantasizes about fucking the Chinese interns

in accounting

younger than his granddaughters.

Despite the triple-bypass

he steals the occasional smoke, 

not 'Craven A' like before, Cohibas 

'he doesn't inhale', the big "C" 

always in the back of his mind

(so many he knew are now gone).

Along with a statin and a beta blocker, 

glucose is lately a concern

but controllable with diet,

so at the stroke of 12

like Cinderella fleeing the ballroom,

he's off to the local eatery

where all the businessmen go -

he'll show them his powers are not slipping

away, he hasn't lost a step,

still makes deals they can envy.

His car is washed weekly,

he over-tips his barber and manicurist,

the local rabbi comes for a donation

and he gives, (just enough each time 

to keep him coming back) he cares 

about what people say,

and for how much he leaves behind,

but not for the sadness of others

he's never had much use for sadness

(or happiness for that matter)

only anger and fear, emotions

that take you places.

At home in the evening

he watches the latest dispatches 

of the war on cable news, he's hooked 

on the TV fetish for violence and suffering,

the peddling of atrocity and injustice  

to the numb addicted audience,

he kicks his feet up on his Laz-E-Boy recliner

and sips Crown Royal on the rocks,

soothed to be safe from the world's general shittiness

and gently stoned he slowly drifts off to sleep.

Jewish Man Praying

Okay, so a black and white photo of a young Jewish man, siddur (prayer book) in hand, donning a kippah (skullcap) and the traditional talit (prayer shawl). Perhaps it was taken in a synagogue during afternoon or evening services? He looks intent on his prayers, a serene pensive moment. Nothing terribly unusual.

When I saw this photo posted on social media that was my reaction. Then I started reading. And I took a closer look. The face looked familiar.

The photo was posted on social media by Terry Foxman. This 'Portrait of a Jewish Man Praying' (as I began to think of it) was taken by her younger brother Robert. I knew Robert as my older brother Randy's friend when they worked together in the early 80s at the Seville Theatre, a repertory cinema near the Montreal Forum downtown. I worked at the Seville (thanks to my family connection) for a few years too. I remember Robert as a guy with wild ideas and a wicked, iconoclastic sense of humour. He was always coming up with hilarious stunts and pranks. This one shows Robert in his heyday. Randy remembers the day that Robert took the photo. It was for a school project. Robert staked out the Forum and waited for the Montreal Canadiens players to leave after a practice. It was not unusual for fans to ask the players for autographs and photos. This portrait is not in fact of a Jewish man, it's Montreal Canadiens hall-of-fame hockey icon, Guy Lafleur - the 'flower' as he was known for the grace and beauty of his skill on the ice passed away last week, at the age of 70. As the story goes, after the team practice, Robert somehow convinced Guy to go to the nearby Alexis Nihon Plaza and take the photo, but not a selfie with a fan, rather wearing the bar-mitzvah boy costume with all the traditional religious paraphernalia. 

This photo surprises on so many levels. One, imagine a professional athlete doing something like this today. Impossible. And not any athlete, but one of the greatest, an elite athlete who at the time was near the top of his game, a local icon - you have to understand how Montreal Canadien hockey players are worshipped. Second, imagine that the fan who wants to take your picture also wants you to go with him to a nearby mall to do it. Third, imagine that the fan wants you to wear some strange clothes to take this picture. It's simply nothing short of astounding that Lafleur went along with it. What a mensch. It was a different (much more innocent) moment in history for sure. Now think of the chutzpah the photographer must have had to try a stunt like this.

I saw the photo and had to make a double-take. Then I thought about its genius. One small piece of information, the identity of the figure, and the entire meaning of the photo changes. And isn't that always the way it is when you look at any photo or work of art. The more you know about the subject matter of the piece, the deeper the experience of what you're viewing. And in this case, what seems like a typical, even boring, traditional Jewish moment turns into a resonant cultural commentary. It suddenly depicts two disjunctive iconographies, the (gentile) Quebecois hockey player worshipped like a god in his popular culture, and the classic religious accoutrements of the historically marginalized and persecuted Jew. 

I talked about it with my brother this afternoon. He said the day Robert told him about the project, he was horrified. He felt it was below Lafleur's dignity and felt embarrassed for him. A stunt done at Lafleur's expense. Looking at it that way it hearkens to the history of Quebec, when many Quebecois were demeaned by their English overlords. But that might be a bit overly exaggerated. Robert was a prankster and maybe he and his buddies got a good laugh out of it at the time. It may have been just a lark, a school project that if they could pull off was sure to get an 'A'. But in retrospect, it has so much more resonance on multiple levels, that today the photo reaches the level of art.  

Losing It

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I may be losing it.

My marbles I mean.

How does one know 

if they're losing their marbles?

Will you tell me if something is off?

Because reality is if you're losing it 

you usually don't know yourself.

You need the ones around you who care

to tell you. They know you better,

in that respect, than you know yourself. 

They notice details, spot changes.

But some will decide it's best

not to say anything because they care. 

I need you to tell me because for me

a mind is like an aqualung

and we're divers in dark suffocating depths

in this buddy system, each of us equipped 

with our own way to breathe,

tanks strapped to our backs, masks on,

we send signals, I wave at you, you at me,  

it's the best we can do in this blue ether -

the craggy reefs and wrecks attract 

species of startling colours and forms, 

life like ours. I could be sinking, or rising, 

or I could be suspended in place,

it's hard to tell at any moment 

in this weightless world where up is down

and down is up, I need you as my anchor,

you know how I was before   

and who I am now.

Before And After

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for Sarah Venart

the ocean tide rises in suffering 

recedes in regret

 

a before and after

moment 

the bell rings

you are home

a package arrives

at your door

unexpected

the sender unknown

you open anyway

a faraway war

the former lives

of faceless bodies shot

dead in a neighbourhood street 

looking like yours

comes into vivid view

the message is received

no space is safe

from delivered bombs 

 

some bullets

have no exit wound.

Shakespeare's MacBeth, Act 5, Scene 5

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Spoken by MacBeth after learning that his wife has died. 

So few words and yet so many of them have made it into our literature and lexicon: 'all our yesterdays', 'Out, out brief candle', 'sound and fury signifying nothing'. On its face the meaning is apparent, that life is futile, we foolishly go about our days with expectations of tomorrow, as if every yesterday provides an assurance of the day to come, (yesterdays that light the way) seemingly unaware that the path we are on is to death, and it may come at an instant, like a gust blowing out a candle. We are 'walking shadows', idiots who perform, 'strut' and 'fret', as if there is meaning and importance to our lives, when in fact our time is short (an hour) and then we are gone ('heard no more'). 

But for me the magic of this passage is in the clockwork precision of the language, the particular choice of words that merge sound and sense drawing the listener's ear to burrow into our subconsciousness. The sound works on the reader without us being aware of it. For instance the repetition of words that suggest the passage of time; 'tomorrow', 'to day', 'yesterday' - time moving from future to present to past, but always reducing in unit from an undetermined length of 'tomorrows' to a myopic point, an 'hour', and finally in the end vanishing completely to 'nothing'. Even the sound of 'tomorrow' a word pregnant with expectation, open ended and trailing off with soft 'ow' syllables, yet containing within it the empty holes of 'o', signifying the 'nothing' seeds of our fate. Contrast 'tomorrow' to the 'petty pace' of 'day to day', the short hard 'p's and 'd's that imitate the concrete steps that we take to pass our days. Notice that 'tomorrow' 'petty pace' and 'day to day' are all three syllables, left-right-left, every syllabic step marking 'recorded time'. The 'o's of tomorrow, those seeds of emptiness return again in the words 'fools' and 'poor', and three syllables repeat in the phrases 'dusty death' 'brief candle' and 'poor player'. Only in 'walking shadow' do three syllables skip to four, and in 'shadow' the 'ow' sound returns our ear (and minds) to 'tomorrow', reinforcing the tension between the hard consonants of action words and the soft fade into the empty air of 'heard no more'. The 'tale told by an idiot' is a phrase shaped by rapid-fire alliterative 't's, like the p's of 'petty pace', but with the emptiness of 'o' inside them, as if to say life is the merger of purposefulness and nothingness, we 'fret' and 'strut' (the t's of 'petty' and 'idiot' making their appearance) and act as if life has purpose even when it possesses none. But the ultimate irony is that this passage itself embodies so much 'sound and fury' Shakespeare concludes signifies nothing, that the reader can justifiably decide actually signifies something deeply meaningful. And I'm quite certain that was his intention.