It is a battle that has been fought for centuries, the battle between form and function; the chair representing function, with its plastic wheels and little levers, which allow me to adjust not only the angle of the back and the height of the seat but also the angle of the seat and the height of the back. It is a wholly unattractive chair by any standard. Big and black and ominous, the sort of chair you might see in the control room of a nuclear reactor, but since I have bought this chair, my neck and shoulders no longer ache after a day in front of my computer. It may be ugly, but it does the job.
The rug has no functional value whatsoever. It is wholly unnecessary. But it’s the only aesthetic addition to a room woefully bereft of beauty. A touch of vanity, to be truthful. I bought it on an impulse after a friend turned her nose up at the ratty floor the rug now covers. Unlike the chair, the rug was cheap: $99 from a discount warehouse up the street. But it has a certain softness, and it has given me a certain satisfaction.
I sit at an L-shaped desk, and am constantly wheeling myself from one arm of the L to the other. Each time I roll, the rug rolls with me.
Well, that’s not accurate, because I come with the same frequency as I go, and one would think that at the end of any day, the law of averages would dictate that the rug, while having travelled some distance, would end up more or less in position. But that’s not what happens. For some reason peculiar to this rug’s rugness, it only wants to move in one direction—that is to say, westward.
When I roll from the computer desk to the writing desk, my rug goes with me, but when I move back, it doesn’t. Thus, at the end of every day, the rug is bunched up on one side of the room and not underfoot where it should be.
So every night before I leave my office, I roll my chair into the hall so I can put the rug back to rightness. It’s an exercise that takes several minutes, and can be troublesome when you are already in your coat, and running late for dinner, as you promised not to be. After a year of this, I approach my end-ofthe-day rug straightening with the same resignation with which I do the dishes—with the certain knowledge that no matter how good a job I do today, I am going to have to do it again tomorrow.
You might think that after a year I would hate this rug. Strangely, the reverse is true. Rather than resent its unruliness, I get pleasure from the few moments each day that it is straight. The last thing I do in the evening before I flick off the light is flick my eyes around the room to check if my rug is correctly squared with the walls. In the morning when I open my office door and see it lying there, I feel a flush of pride if its edges are lined up correctly.
There is no other rug I own that gives me this pleasure. I expect my other rugs to be straight and therefore get no satisfaction when they are. But this rug, my travelling rug, like an unruly child or a quarrelsome mate, is the one that pleases me, and gives me hope too, great hope, at that small moment at the start of each day, with everything in its place, that anything, anything at all, is possible.
2 February 2000
SPELLING
My grandfather, an engineer and a World War I pilot who reputedly flew his plane under London Bridge during the celebrations at the end of that war, and who everyone seems to agree was a good guy, was also, I learned recently, an atrocious speller.
“I was reading his log books,” my cousin told me. “He was writing about winning something. He spelled won, w-o-n-e.”
My cousin is a teacher. He seemed embarrassed about this. This was, after all, his grandfather too. I, on the other hand, was delighted.
I have never spelled won with both a w and an e, but I have never one a spelling bee either.
And as I consider my life as a speller, I would gladly reach for words like ignominious, fiasco and flopperoo, if I could spell them. (Ed. note: you should have seen these in his draft.) But if I want to work on my own, I am left with monosillibic monocilabac mono only the most simple of words. (Ed. note: sometimes it is beyond belief.)
I have worked on this over the years. I keep a dictionary, the Oxford, within arm’s reach.
For a while I made it a habit to put a notation beside a word each time I had to check its spelling. I used to note the date as well.
I gave that up in embarrassment the seventh time I looked up embarrassment over a three-month period. I decided my time would be better spent working out why I needed to use the word so often.
Definitely is another word that trips me up. I want to insert the letter a where the second i is supposed to go. That is, I want, by reflex to be definate about things rather than definite. Why I seem to need to be definite so often is just another embarrassing question.
For years I paused over the word writer. My pen would hover over the t. Was there one t or two ts? I would ask myself. Over and over and over again. And when I finally got that straight, I would still trip on its gerund, writing. Surely you doubled the t when you added the ing. I often did. But not always.
Rhythm is another word that stumps me every time. Come on. There is only one vowel, and it’s a y? Surely they meant it to be two ys and one h.
As I say, I have looked some of these words up countless times. But I have never turned to my Oxford to find the difference between desert or dessert. I am good there. One s in desert, two in dessert. Dessert has two because you always want a second helping. But how come I can remember the little trick my mother taught me for distinguishing those two words, but I can’t remember if there is one l or two ls in family?
I know I’m not alone with these challenges. There is some comfort in that. But let’s be honest, my grandfather was a pilot and an engineer, and if he wanted to spell won with a w and an e, what did it matter? My problem is that I am a writer or, more often, a writter, and writters really should know better. They work with werds.
1 October 2006
I AM DEEPLY SORRY
I found a note written to myself the other day that seems to say: Apologize to L.S.
I am not sure that’s what it says. I have studied the note carefully, one line written on a piece of letter-sized paper. It is hard to decipher, but I wrote it. There is no doubt about that. It isn’t my best handwriting. It appears I was hurried when I wrote the note. It looks like something I might have written when I was preoccupied. All I can say for certain is this: I wrote the note, and it seems to say I owe L.S. an apology.
There are several problems with this. The first, which may be an insurmountable one, is that have I no idea whosoever L.S. might be, and why I might owe him, or her, an apology. Although once I clearly knew both of these things.
And while it may be futile under the circumstance, I would, nevertheless, like to do that here and now.
I am sorry, L.S., for whatever it was I did. Or didn’t.
Possibly I was late. Probably I was late. Certainly I was late. L.S., I am sorry I was late.
But it might have been more than that. Maybe I forgot something. And although I have now doubled up, and forgotten what it was that I forgot, I would like to apologize for that too. I am sorry I forgot, and I am really sorry I have forgotten whatever it is I forgot about.
I am especially sorry I have forgotten you too, L.S.
It is important you understand that although I have forgotten you right now, I’m not going to deny that (something I think should count in my favour). I could have faked it. I could have apologized and left it at that. You never would have known.
Although you seem to have vanished completely from my life, or the memory of you has vanished, it is important you understand it wasn’t always so. Once you meant enough that I stopped whatever it was I was doing (exactly what that was I am no longer sure, but that is hardly important), got out a paper and pen and wrote a note, reminding myself to apologize. And yes, it might be a little late, but I am, as they say, following through, and that should count too.
Maybe one day I will wake in the middle of the night and your name will be on the tip of my tongue, where, I admit, it hasn’t been for a long time, and God knows isn’t r
ight now, though I wish it were. But one night it might be. And if you have been waking up in the middle of the night yourself, wondering about me, probably thinking bad thoughts because I never apologized, I hope you will remember that actually, I did, right now.
I am sorry for being late, which, as I have already said, I am sure I was.
And I am sorry for everything I have forgotten, most importantly, your existence, but also for that thing I did back when I hadn’t forgotten you, the thing that I never apologized for. And while I am at it, I am sorry that I even came into your life, not for me, I didn’t mind at all, I have forgotten all about, well, everything to be honest, but for you. I want you to know that when I knew you, you were on my mind, often. I used to like the way you bubbled up and distracted me, and how I used to write little notes about you, though I admit you don’t bubble up as often as you used to, except for lately, and I am sorry for that too. I just wish I could remember who you are, or were, so I could forget about you again.
I am also sorry if you are two people instead of one. If you are, which just occurred to me, L and S, instead of L.S., I am doubly sorry to both of you for the misunderstanding, as well as everything else.
And while I am on the subject of everything else, I want to say I am sorry my handwriting is so poor, because if it were better, maybe the note would actually say something completely different, and I wouldn’t be bothering you about this at all, in which case I apologize for that too.
And now that I have said that, there are a few other things I should address that don’t have anything to do with you, L.S., although I can’t be completely sure.
I would like to say I am sorry for the way I have been the past few weeks. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I haven’t been my best self. I have been preoccupied with some things that I needn’t go into right now, and that is why I might have been a little short.
I would like to apologize to the guy driving the red Tercel on Eglinton Avenue (you know who you are). You were absolutely right—that was an idiot thing for me to do, and I regret both it and what I said. Although you couldn’t have heard my exact words, I know you got the drift of it. I want you to know I was late for an appointment, if that makes any difference. But I didn’t have to respond the way I did; that wasn’t helpful at all.
And to everyone I haven’t phoned whom I should have phoned, I apologize. And to Bell Canada too. The cheque is in the mail. Well, it’s not actually in the mail, but I will write a cheque tonight and will get it in the mail tomorrow. Or the day after, latest. It’s as good as in the mail. I have the money. It’s just that I have, as I said a moment ago, been a little preoccupied.
And to Mr. O’Neill, who taught me high school English, I am sorry for so much, especially for reading the Coles Notes instead of the books, but not only for that, also for the way I behaved. It was disrespectful. And it probably would have been a lot better to have said this while you were still alive. But this is the best I can do now. Maybe you can hear.
I am sorry, Mr. O’Neill, for my disrespect; and red Tercel guy, I am sorry for my rudeness; and if you are the waiter at that little Italian place where I was last week, I am sorry too (you know what I’m talking about). There are a few others while I am at it, but I really should talk to you face to face. But in case I don’t get to it, I am sorry. Really. I am.
Finally, and most importantly, let me say it again, L.S., I’m sorry to you especially, for whatever it was I did, or didn’t do, and for taking up your time with all this, but it has been bothering me. I needed to get it off my chest.
28 January 2007
THE JOY OF SOCKS
Looking back over fifty years of financial ineptitude, I have come to realize that I was, paradoxically, the wealthiest at that time in my life when I had the least amount of money.
Those would have been the years of my early teens, when my annual income was counted in the hundreds, not thousands, and came from selling Christmas, birthday and what were then called “all-purpose” cards door to door around our neighbourhood. I was alerted to the opportunity by a friend, and applied via an ad that ran regularly on the back of comic books at the time. I was moved to fill in the coupon and mail it to the Regal Greeting Card Company of Eglinton Avenue, in the faraway and mysterious City of Toronto, by my desire to own a bicycle with dropped handlebars and more than one speed. I filled out the application with little hope of financial success. To my amazement, I made enough money selling cards, and candles that dripped multicoloured wax, to buy the bike, and have enough left over that the only thing I could imagine doing with it was to put it in the bank. What more could a boy want than a bike? That’s when I was truly wealthy, when my income exceeded my dreams.
Now, a wealthy man by many measures, not rich, not by a long shot, but with more money than I dreamed of having when I was twelve, I long for the feeling of wealth I biked around with in those spring days of my early teens, when my bank account was fat.
I still have some disposable income within reach, but I have learned enough over the years to know that using it to buy things won’t make me feel rich. Possessions are more apt to saddle me with their collateral responsibilities than anoint me with a sense of wealth.
A yacht, for instance, if I could afford one, wouldn’t introduce a feeling of wealth into my life. It would introduce a whole new world of worry: worry about docking fees and weather charts, the mysteries of motors and the vagaries of wind.
A sports car, if I were foolish enough to buy one, would bring with it the worry of rust and age-appropriate automobiles.
Wealth, or the sense of wealth, the sense that gave such a spring to my step when I was a young boy with $359 in the bank, cannot be bought. Or so I thought.
I thought wrong.
I have stumbled, quite by accident, on a surefire way to recapture the feeling of wealth that I had as a boy.
It is simple. It is cheap, and it can be summed up in one word: socks.
If you want to feel rich beyond your wildest dreams, here is what to do. Find yourself a place where they discount socks. You can get good socks for very little money if you shop around. I used to go to the McGregor factory outlet on Spadina Avenue until it moved to the suburbs. If there is not a factory outlet near you, you can go to one of those big-box discount retailers. Unless that’s against your neighbourly spirit, in which case you should go to your local clothing store and ask them what kind of break they would give you if you were to buy, say, ten, twenty, or thirty pairs of socks. The actual price isn’t the most important thing. The feeling that you are getting a deal is. The important thing is to head to someplace where you feel like you are getting a fair deal on socks. Then you have to buy ... a lot. Of socks. The absolute number is not critical. The number will be different for different people. The critical thing is that you have to buy enough pairs of socks that you feel uncomfortable about it. You have to exceed your limit of sock comfort. You have to feel that when it comes to socks, you have gone overboard. You have, where socks are concerned, to have slipped into excess. Like those people you have read about who have way too many pairs of shoes in their closets. It has to be like that for you with socks. The feeling is the important thing here, not the actual number of pairs of socks.
In fact, it is far better that you don’t actually know how many pairs of socks you buy. We are talking about socks as a substitute for wealth. John Paul Getty, a man who knew a thing or two about wealth, said if you can count your money then you are not really a rich man. So, in the strictest sense, you shouldn’t know how many pairs of socks you have.
If you have negotiated a deal at a store where you get a discount for buying, say, twenty pairs of socks, the best way around this is to take the twenty pairs of socks to the cash and then add a few more pairs without counting.
You’ll get in the spirit of this once you decide on the store. Just, as they say, do it.
Then pay for the socks. Take them home. Put them in your sock drawer without, and this is important, rem
oving any of the packaging or labelling.
Now every morning when you get dressed, you are going to open a new pair of socks. And you are going to do that, day after day for as long as it takes. Only the very rich can afford to do something like that.
12 May 2002
ON BEAUTY
I noted with chagrin last week that the Miss Manitoba Pageant will have a blind man as part of the judging panel, part of a promise issued by Shirley Janzen, the Winkler, Manitoba–based organizer of the contest, to rate contestants on brains and not beauty.
“I’m not a supporter of beauty pageants,” says Ms. Janzen.
“Neither am I,” I said at lunch to the beautiful woman who brought this to my attention. “That’s exactly what I think. Those contests are demeaning to women.”
That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant, or that’s what I thought I meant, until later that night when I visited a dark and private corner of my conscience, a corner I hadn’t visited for a while, and I discovered that that is not what I meant at all.
I found that I am, in fact, 100 percent behind beauty, that I love beautiful things, like moonlight shimmering on the water, and ravioli pasta stuffed with sharp cheese and fresh herbs floating in a pool of virgin olive oil, and poetry (when I can understand it) and, yes, the vision of a young woman, with smooth tan skin, wearing a summer dress and a set of roller blades, weaving by on the sidewalk, her dress flapping in the wind. Truth be known, if you put a gun to my head and said I have to choose, I have to choose right now, its brains or beauty, I would say, put down the gun, I know that one, I choose beauty every time. Though not for my dentist, of course, or for that matter my investment dealer. Then I thought of my investment dealer, who happens to be bald and a little overweight, and who has a defective heart, and I realized that I certainly wasn’t thinking of beauty when I chose him, and look where that’s got me. No one would look at my portfolio these days and say it’s a thing of beauty. In fact, my overweight broker has done nothing but deliver me capital losses for longer than I can remember. And I thought how much more palatable those losses would have been if they had been handed to me by, say, Miss Manitoba, especially if Miss Manitoba did it by moonlight, over a plate of that pasta, and she was wearing one of those little sundresses I favour, and I was looking my best too, in that grey suit I paid too much for but love nevertheless.
The Vinyl Café Notebooks Page 22
