2012.12.25 — Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor: Finished & a Triptych of Small Fushigis*

Timothy Taylor
Stanley Park
Toronto:Random House Canada ISBN 9780307363596.

Began 2012.11.27
Finished 2012.12.23

★★★★★

I have a dream, chef and struggling restaurant owner Jeremy Papier avers. I want my restaurant to bring the hyper-industrialized, homogenized, world back to its roots: food, specifically, that which is grown locally.

And so he gets his dream when, through struggling to find his own family's roots, he begins to cook the wildlife of Vancouver's Stanley Park: the squirrels, starlings, ducks, geese, raccoons. His first park repast was with his father. They dined on the duck that his father had caught. Eventually Jeremy began to feed a collective of the homeless living in the park. His father, 'The Professor,' is a social anthropologist who, in doing this project, his last, has gone back to finish where he began his career. He is exploring his own and the city's roots by choosing to live amongst the homeless who reside beneath the forest's canopy, hidden from the city's eyes that are too busy to see them. He is exploring what it is that are the ties, the roots, that bind people to homelessness. During the course of the book, this sub-theme comments that, in some ways, these people are more closely connected to their environment, more alive if you will, than the grasping many who have big houses, but spend most of their time feeling alienated and disconnected from their lives.

But the protagonist is Jeremy, and his dream falls apart when his self-destructive impulse purchase of a $3000 knife cuts the final threads of his credit card kiting. With creditors hounding him, he turns to the international coffee czar to save him and his dream. But a czar doesn't live the dreams of others, and in an elegance only a wealthy thug can envisage, he steals Jeremy's dream and twists it into an ungrounded international smorgasbord.

What would any creative and daring Chef do to see his dream survive beneath the tyranny of the condescension of wealth?

And so Taylor writes a complex and elegant fugue that explores the roots of family and food. This is an engaging delightful and complex read. I highly recommend it.

Fushigi Triptych
During the course of my reading SP it joined me to participate in several small fushigis. Some I've already blogged. See 2012.12.15 — Bonfire of the Vanities, and 2012.12.01 — Anna Russell and Kris Boyd and Lamb Stew: Three Tiny Fushigis. But three small ones, collectively, have crept up in the final pages that have moved me enough to blog them as one.

Third One First.

… There was a great quantity of Scotch going down and many, many cigars being waved around.

Olli was offered a Scotch with this very thought, leaning back in his chair thinking about it and watching through the front window as Kiwi hailed a cab and disappeared into the night. Just thinking about that and a voice next to his ear said: "Scotch, sir?"

"What do you have?" he asked by mistake.

"Glenmorangie, Loch Dhu, Balvenie, Dalwhinnie, Glenkinkchie, Cragganmore, Oban, Talisker, Lagavulin, Macallan, Laphroaig, Connemara, Glenhaven and Sheep Dip."

They didn't even have Glenfiddich (393).

What makes this interesting is that the day before I read this I was sent out to buy a bottle of Scotch for our upcoming party. I don't drink Scotch, and so many years ago a friend recommended that a good one to have on hand for Scotch drinking guests is Talisker. Alas, my local liquor store no longer stocks it. So, after talking with the sales rep, she suggested Glenmorangie. To the best of my remembrance, I've never seen nor heard of either of these scotches before.

The Second One Second. A little earlier in the book, I read:

"It really looks . . . dramatic," Margaret said, moving on. But Jeremy just kept stroking his chin and scratching his ear, glancing around the room. He looked pale; had he lost weight? (369)

Well, earlier that day I read the stories in the WSS's weekly short story contests: Week 148: Witchcraft. In it, Tim has written an excellent story called Darrens. Here's the first paragraph:

I walk the one hundred twenty three steps from my desk by the elevators to the cafeteria and congratulate myself on not having thought about her. Unfortunately, this involves thinking about her. I touch my left earlobe with my right index finger.

Initially this wasn't strong enough to blog, even as the second of two funny fushigis.

First One Last. Okay, not the first first in this book, but the first since the last time I blogged a fushigi from this book. This one started on December 18th. Again, in the WSS, but this time in the TPBM (The Person Below Me) thread, when M posted # 2397. He wrote: TPBM sometimes gets chocolate on the keyboard.

The following day ML called up from the living room. She was impressed by a computer tech pre-Christmas 'news' story that covered, amongst other things, a kid-proof computer keyboard.

The following day, when I recommenced perusing Stanley Park I was amused to read:

Angela's idea [for her own restaurant] was Grazer, a high-concept tapas Web bar. Satay, tofu spears, samosas and slivers of super-fusion designer pizza. Caviar and quail egg was mentioned. The Web part centred on the stand-up tables with shelves for the tapas dishes and pop-up, active-matrix, flat screens. Waterproof touch-pad keyboards (324).

By itself, not worthy of noting as a fushigi, but first of three in a row.

Aside
I debated about including this, but… well, here it is. A little earlier, on the 17th, in post #2380 of TPBM thread I wrote:

Thank you Al and Christa for your confidence in my writing! OMG, now I'm feeling so much pressure! Me and my big fat mouth! I'm having trouble breathing.... [clunk a;ldkfja;sdlkfha;sdofja;sldfjka;sdfjka;sdfjka;sdfkjas;dfjas;dlfjas;dflkasdf — oops, sorry about that. Head fell forward onto keyboard.]

End of Fushigi Triptych.

Book Review Resumes and Closes — an extended citation
Here is a passage I flagged while reading SP to include in my blog book review.

"Shitty week," Jeremy snapped. But he stopped at that, because in the Professor's eyes, those impervious eyes, there was a colour that he recognized. A shade of bruising. A shade of vulnerability. He lowered his voice. "How is Caruzo?"

"Sends his best."

Jeremy steadied himself.

The Professor spoke first. "There was a woman in the park on the day they died."

Jeremy dropped his head. God.

"She saw something that day... someone..."

Jeremy turned and stepped into the street. The Professor remained on the grass. He held the last inch of his park. "The two are meant to be together," he said, talking to Jeremy's back. "Just as the two were drawn from the same soil, so too must the same soil hold them...."

The strange words.

Jeremy spun, standing in the middle of the empty nighttime street. From her expensive apartment window high in the concrete and glass monolith behind them, had the resilient old lady of the West End risen for a nocturnal glass of grapefruit juice just then, she might have looked down and seen a small, charged scene on her quiet street. A rumpled figure, tired, authoritative, holding court on the grass by the curb, his arms crossed, his head back looking at the sky. And opposite him, a leaner, younger frame of a discernibly similar type, angular, also in black, hands in his jacket pockets rigidly, critically, dubiously. Staring at the older cast of himself.

"From the file in the library," Jeremy said.

The Professor pantomimed applause.

"And if you've read it," Jeremy went on, "may I ask why I—"

"Because you are a part of what is going on here."

Jeremy stared. He didn't want to know. He plunged.

"I accepted an offer." Even to his own ear, the words clanked coldly out into the night air between them, but he couldn't have predicted that the statement would bring the Professor's arms limply to his sides, that it would pull him a step forward. Out of the park. Onto the curb. Into the gutter. The Professor was staring at his son, his blood. Standing in the street, in the city. "Oh, you have made such a mistake."

"It's a good deal. It gives me freedom."

"Freedom. So many things done in this name."

Freedom from debt, Jeremy tried to say, but the Professor was looking past him now. Over his shoulder and up between the buildings. Beyond. He was whispering.

"Too often, I think, the desire for freedom masks the desire for destruction."

The words a thin stream. A last breath.

"You want to destroy everything around you, everything you have created for yourself or been given by others. To be free."

Tapering. Diminishing. Losing angularity, presence, power.

"Natural for you, perfectly natural," the Professor whispered. "Natural to refuse the key that is given. To be blind in the darkness of knowing. To be filled with a dark light that we must shine on the people around us. A light that makes us weep and pull down our own houses."

The wind spoke in the cherry trees, a hissing speech through purple leaves and thin black branches. The city hummed, hypnotic. Winding through the deepest part of a Wednesday night.

"Come stay with me," Jeremy said. He could hardly hear his own words. "Do your research but sleep in a bed. Write your notes at a table. You could shave."

"Stay involved," the Professor said. Back. Alert. "Stay interested."

No second for an answer. He turned. He descended the hill at a determined trot. He threaded through the cherry trees, from the branches of which hung the fruits of their joint linkage to this place.

Around the lagoon went the Professor, dwindling down, then swallowed by the darkness (195-7).

2011.10.23 — The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje — finished 2011.10.17

Began 2011.09.27.

Michael Ondaatje.
The Cat's Table.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7710-6864-5.

Michael Ondaatje is one of the true masters of English poetry in prose. But when I learned that The Cat's Table was in the style of a memoir, I was slightly disappointed because, with some exceptions, I have not been fond of memoirs as such. However I felt curious and expectant that he would convert me. He did. He exceeded expectation because he managed, again, to convince me while reading his latest book that the one in my hands is my new Ondaatje favourite.

★★★★★

And to describe it as a memoir is an accurate description, but only in the same way that to say the sky is blue is accurate: it misses the complexity of the experience. The arc of the story is a memoir of a pre-pubescent boy sent to England on a ship with scant adult supervision. Some critics I've read found that to be a stumbling point, but my childhood spent with scant adult supervision for extended periods of time is eerily echoed in how Michael interacts with the adult social marginals he and his new found friends are assigned to sit with at the cat's table, which is, I learned in this book, that one table in a public space that no one wants to be seated at. Thus he is lumped in with the ship's other dining room undesirables and comes to learn that what does not glitter may very well yield gold and beyond that the even more valuable stuff of a lived life.

In the Q&A portion of the reading I attended, Ondaatje insisted that the book is not a memoir. He claims that, even though he did take a ship from Columbo to England as a child the age of the protagonist, Michael, he has little if even any memory of it. Ondaatje avers that his unremembered childhood trip sparked an idea for a story, that evolved as it was written, to include unexpected characters moving downstage into significance that

he had not imagined.

Regardless memoir or fiction, Ondaatje's writing here is as beautiful as anything he has written:

A peculiarity of Miss Lasqueti was that she was a sleeper. Someone who at certain hours during the day could barely stay awake. You saw her fighting it. This struggle made her endearing, as if she were forever warding off an unjustified punishment. You'd walk past her in a deck chair, her head falling slowly towards the book she was attempting to read. She was in many ways our table's ghost, for it was also revealed that she sleepwalked, a dangerous habit on a ship. A sliver of white, I see her always, against the dark rolling sea.

What was her future? What had been her past? She was the only one from the Cat's Table who was able to force us out of ourselves in order to imagine another's life. I admit it was mostly Ramadhin who coaxed this empathy from Cassius and me. Ramadhin was always the most generous of the three of us. But for the first time in our lives we began to sense there was an unlairness in someone else's life. Miss Lasqueti had, I remember, "gunpowder tea," which she mixed with a cup of hot water at our table, then poured into a thermos before she left us for the afternoon. You could actually see the flush enter her face as the drink knocked her awake (p74).

and:

Sleep is a prison^* for a boy who has friends to meet. We were impatient with the night, up before sunrise surrounded the ship. We could not wait to continue exploring this universe. Lying in my bunk I would hear Ramadhin's gentle knock on the door, in code. A pointless code, really—who else could it have been at that hour? Two taps, a long pause, another tap. If I did not climb down and open the door I would hear his theatrical cough. And if I still did not respond, I would hear him whisper "Mynah," which had become my nickname (p24).

*I read the evocative phrase Sleep is a prison the day after I finished reading the play A Sleep of Prisoners. The uniqueness of both phrases — I hadn't read either one anywhere that I remember — has prompted me to include this as a fushigi. Or at least close enough for me to blog it as such. [Addendum: The Cat's Table is also loosely entangled in another, 'future' fushigi, involving cats. See The Cat & the Camel blog.]

Beyond the sheer beauty of the writing Ondaatje seamlessly moves through the story using various voices. He has captured with perfection what I remember as the feelings of childhood wonder and acceptance of the process of being alive through Michael's eyes. Things simply are: the trip, the people, the intense life changing friendship that lasted for only 21 days. But Ondaatje also brings to the telling the reflectiveness of an adult considering a particular childhood passage. And he does this with a grace and lightness of touch that manages to keep the child's feeling of life's magic fully alive. And then he plays the omniscient writer's role to elaborate the background of two of the characters.

And Ondaatje brings to fruition a mystery that is introduced, invisibly, quite early, that becomes a mystery well into the book, and closes with human simplicity and gentle, quiet satisfaction.

All seamlessly. A breathtakingly beautiful and fulfilling read.

The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment — Finished 2010.09.22

My friend RT gave me a copy of this book. I admit that I do not remember either hearing or seeing anything about this book before the day RT presented me with it last week. This is, to my mind rather odd given the range of so-called 'spiritual' books I have read and researched in the last 35 years or so. And I frequent the bibliography section of those books that have them, and don't remember having my eye or my mind's eye catch it.


Thaddeus Golas.
The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment.
Palo Alto, CA.: The Seed Center, 1974.

And in the laziness theme of the book, here is the short review I gave it in my on-line library, GoodReads.

I have an ambivalent reaction to this book. It gave me no new understanding, but I like that Golas has aligned himself with Chuang Tzu and like Taoists who argue against straining and struggling to take actions or achieve understanding. It is likely at a more challenging level to spiritual than an introduction, but unnecessary for people who I have been struggling with the spiritual meanings of life. I quite like his blunt way of stating the obvious truths we delude ourselves into not seeing. As such I keep thinking that it deserves more than 3 stars, but I cannot bring myself to move my rating to 4. Perhaps my concern about it is that like many spiritual guides, it emphasizes the role of mind and attitude in achieving so-called enlightenment at the expense of respecting one's somatic reality, and perhaps well-being. As a society we are completely beholden to products of the mind, be it agri-business's justified land, water and animal abuse, the poisoning of our food products with -icides or business practices with Harvard Business Schooled flow-charted MBA-itis. 

To extend that a bit, I also found that, while what Golas has written is truthful and will likely lead to enlightenment, it seemed to lack some kind of hard to isolate substantiveness. I found myself left feeling a little ... disappointed, somehow, even though it participated in a curious fushigi (or synchronicity-petite) while I was reading it.

I admit that my reaction is very likely a sign that I am indeed un-enlightened. And that is undoubtedly true. But I guess I have grown to enjoy the weight of Jung's and Berman's writing, and the light complexity of Chuang Tzu and the like. Have I become addicted to good writing, at the expense of moving towards enlightenment? Hmmmmm.

☆ ☆ ☆