books – TOpoet

Recap May 2023

June 2, 2023 topoetLeave a comment

City of Valleys 21 sections, about 43,000 words posted so far with 88,000 approx yet to be edited then posted.

Among the movies I watched in May are: All About My Mother (1999) Pedro Almodóvar’s glossy, soap-opera tribute to All About Eve & A Street Car Named Desire. Colourful, soulful & I was happy to see it again. One of those movies in which no one has just one problem – she’s a nun, she’s pregnant, she is HIV+.

Simu Liu heads up the cast in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. I’m not a fan of cgi battles so the ones here were perfect for fast forward. I enjoyed the the cultural mix of legend & super hero. Simu is a perfect photogenic hero though a bit banal as a performer. Moves so fat you don’t really care about the plot. Is his Dad really dead?

red turns to green after a few weeks of sun

Man of LaMancha was flop way back 1972. I may have seen it then but I had no memory of it so watching it recently I rather enjoyed it though it did go on & on. The music is passable. The performances are okay, Sophia Loren was the best of the lot.

Read Gerald Hannon’s memoir “Immoral, Indecent, and Scurrilous: The Making of an Unrepentant Sex Radical.” I remember his ‘troublesome’ article & the fuss it created. The book is an easy, almost chatty read, that takes one through the Toronto lgbt scene from the 70’s to the 2000’s. He is frank, direct & funny. Highly recommended.

Finished La Terre (The Earth) another in Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series. Detailed, emotionally over-wrought & great fun. Zola is Charles Dickens with sex. I loved it & was amazed that I could easily follow the lives of over 100 characters & their farm life struggles.

Re-read Gordon Merrick’s The Lord Won’t Mind (1970). I first read in back in the early 70’s & my recollection of it was limited, to say the least. It is unapologetically & frankly gay/queer. Not overly complex & clearly a romantic fiction. A gay male Harlequin romance with explicit sex. I have an edition of the three novels & this is a fun start to it. Gay life before disco or even cell phones – how did they manage!

Garden annuals planted, perennials all doing well & the recent heat wave has sped things along. All we need is rain to turn it into tropical forest. Health remains good – the meds have the hypertension under control, plus some dietary changes have helped keep it down.

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Hearing Things

May 9, 2023 topoetLeave a comment

Hearing Things

I stopped hearing things –

to be precise

I was not aware of the things

I was hearing

I heard them so often

they no longer registered

like the rumble of the subway

the sound fades

I only notice when it stops

not that it is silent

but something is missing

some sounds

I always hear

like the ticking of a watch

a clock

when I got my first electronic alarm

that only sounded when it rang

I had my first night of real sleep

I eventually stopped hearing

emotional chatter

the noise of angry squirrels

reminds me of moments in the past

moments

that could alarm me with shame

remorse

bitterness

not that I’ve forgotten them

not that I’m unaware

the subway still runs

and sometimes I take a ride

but I no longer wonder

if that rumble

is my fault

When I was living with my family in Sydney (Cape Breton) I moved my bedroom to the rumpus room in the basement where was cooler in the summer & warmer in the winter. It was like living in a comfy cave with one window at group level. Being in the basement the room was near the furnace. The hum of it heating the house would put me to sleep many nights. I missed that hum when I moved out on my own.

When I arrived in Toronto decades ago I was unprepared for the constant traffic flow, unprepared for the almost constant sound of ambulance & fire engine sirens. On top of which was the rumble of streetcars & the subway. When we moved into our house in the east end of the city it nearly on top of the subway tunnel &, as we later discovered, also above the underground turnoff that took the trains to the east end transit yard.

China rattled on shelves, panes in windows rattled, water in glasses would vibrate. I gradually ‘silenced’ most of those rattles with cloth or shims. After a year I stopped noticing the rumble of the underground but guests to our house nearly always notice it as the trains pass by nearly very five to ten minutes all day. The sound doesn’t stop but I stop hearing it. I don’t notice the sirens as much anymore too.

I did have issues with ticking alarm clocks – the first clock radio I had was a Godsend but those early ones had flip down numbers that I could hear too 😦 I’d have to put them far enough away that I didn’t hear the numbers change but close enough to hear when the radio came on. Thanks to the march of science that’s no longer an issue. My cell phone makes only the noises I want.

The piece also alludes to the emotional noise of people – usually people in distress – that I’ve learned to acknowledge without getting overly caught up in it, unless I’ve contributed to it somehow & even then I don’t take blame for reactions that are more theirs than anything else.

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February 2023 Recap

March 3, 2023 topoetLeave a comment

The WP map tells me my hits have come from over 20 countries around the world. The map shows the top 10 countries. I’m pleased to see Mauritius & Kenya still in the top 10.

Most popular posts were the photo essays. People clearly can’t enough of snow people. all are recent posts but there have been dips into the archives. One was a surprise. My post about Sengalese director Ousmane Sembène (https://topoet.ca/2019/10/07/ousmane-sembene/) experience a a handful of looks. I guess someone is teaching a film course on obscure African film directors. Rereading the blog makes me want to see the movies again.

Really enjoyed CBC’s BollyWed & look forward to season 2. It is a fun, humorous look at life in Toronto’s Gerrard St E, Little India. I like the fact every line isn’t a punch line & the fact that characters aren’t bent on out-joking one another. Happy Best in Miniature has returned for another season of tiny jars of pickled plums. I find myself squinting by the end of each episode lol.

Watched: The Ring (1952) a surprisingly direct film about anti-Mexican racism with hood performances, decent fight scenes & a sort of happy ending. Early Rita Moreno & Spanish dialogue without subtitles. Excellent.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939) Intense Japanese b/w soap opera about Kabuki hierarchy & class. He falls for a servant girl but they can’t marry as it will bring shame to the family & in the end she sacrifices her own happiness so he doesn’t sully that family name. Fascinating with some wonderful real Kabuki scenes.

Dulces horas (1982) Spanish – Malena 2000 (Italian) – two excellent films about childhood, memory & fantasy. In the first a playwright write a play about his childhood & casts a woman who looks exactly like his mother. It drifts from memory to the play to romance. In the second am adolescent boy had crush on stunning woman whose husband is at war. Tender, emotional & sad. the leads are so beautiful it almost doesn’t matter about the plot lol. Both owe a lot to Fellini in their observations of village life & sexual obsession.

Kiss Me Kate (1953) was a joy to watch with its amazing colours, energetic dance & marvellous songs. The backstage plot was busy & the romantic subplot of ex’s was tedious. Performances were excellent. I loved ‘True To You’ as an ode to infidelity. Cole Porter at his finest. I couldn’t believe he got away with the the chorus of Dick Dick Dick searching for Dick. Ann Miller at her best, plus Bob Fosse in tights.

Finished Whistle, the final book in James Jones WWII trilogy. (From Here To Eternity; The Thin Red Line) The injured soldiers back in the USA, recovering in a military hospital & returning to a ‘normal’ life. I love his soapy style, varying points of view & the immersion into masculinity & the inner psychology of soldiering.

Dove Season by Robin Brande Books 1-4 – this is a fun, elaborate sci-fi series about the secret alien occupation of Earth. The initial character is a woman who can fly – she’s flies as I often do in dreams by taking a few running steps, flapping arms & lifting off. Her ability to fly is the result of an ancient ceremony (or is it?) The series take off from there with an endless array of characters, aliens, alien technology & conspiracies. Book 5 has yet to be released.

Recap 2022

January 7, 2023January 7, 2023 topoetLeave a comment

Over the past year my TOpoet.ca following blog grew from 468 to 470! Doesn’t sound like much but I did a major cull of followers who are no longer active on WordPress or who have never ‘liked’ a post. The WordPress map show my hits have come from over 70 countries around the world. USA still tops the list but that China & Bangladesh are in the top 10 is a surprise. Nigeria in the top 20 – but behind Malawi! Kazakhstan! Still no hits from North Korea 😦 My Tumblr is at 346 followers. 229 Twitter followers.

My top ten posts of the year includes 1 out of the archives! I also started a new blog – Second Sight – where I’m posting about my Wiccan/Druid explorations. Fewer photos & fewer posts as well.

In 2021 I did 227 posts; in 2022: 231 blog posts plus several on Second Sight. I’m not counting the posts from ten years ago I resurrecting as Flashback Friday. Four posts a week is enough for me to deal with. So far no complaints lol.

Picture Perfect finally came to an end in September with just over 188,00 in 133 sections! It may get another edit before I ‘release’ it as an PDF. I plan to repost ‘City of Valleys’ from 2012 starting in 2023. It only runs at 130,000, but who knows what a fresh edit after all these years will do to it.

I watch endless movies & documentaries. One that I have rewatched & kept to rewatch again is the documentary ‘Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra’ which starts as history of the Australian aboriginal dance company but becomes a powerful mediation on the cost of creativity. The dancing is stunning, the music is incredible & the cost of creativity is heartbreaking.

Memorable was ‘Eijanaika or Why Not?’ a 1981 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura. This is an epic period piece about ordinary folk, in spectacular colour. A plot too complex to sum up but the ‘carnival’ world is amazing. Another an incredible Japanese movie written & directed by Kurosawa was ‘I Live In Fear’ from1955 – starring Toshiro Mifune. A devastating look at how the bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki affected the emotional climate of Japan. Despite bad aging make-up Toshiro Mifune gives one of his best performances. Worth searching out. Both of these via TCM

reproduction of robe from 1953 production of Richard III

I also watched the DVD of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Endless Poetry – the follow up to The Dance of Reality. Both are autobiographic film journeys though his creative path. Surreal, imaginative, constantly surprising – for example, his mother’s dialogue is all sung bel canto. On the extras he rants about the loss of ‘art’ in mainstream cinema & difficulty of getting funding for his type of film. Will there be a part 3? Depends on crowd funding.

As usual no English-language films made the list. But I did see some plays in my native tongue (lol). We got back to the Stratford festival & throughly enjoyed all that we saw. In particular their production of Richard III that was staged perfectly & performed with energy & passion. Also I loved Hamlet 911 – highly experimental & multi-layered.

I read dozens of books over the year but the one that stands out is The Masterpiece’ Emile Zola’s powerful exploration of the creative drive, the emotional & psychological cost of both success & failure. Why isn’t Masterpiece Theatre making films from these classic novels. How many versions of Persuasion do we need?

The return to ‘normal’ life has been simple enough. I continue to mask when shopping, travelling on subway, going to plays, I’ve had all my shots & boosters. My health remains consistent. At the first sign of a cold I do a covid test home test to be sure. I’ve resisted the push to go back to f2f recovery meetings beyond one, that is a short walk from house & everyone there remains masked. Zoom continues to pick up the slack – many meetings have closed but some have become so established they re still getting between 80 & 180 people showing up.

No major plans for the coming year, though I do have a lotto max travel list – nothing international: who wants to get stuck in an airport for a week when a flight gets cancelled 🙂 We’re eyeing some of the coming Stratford season & will be booking a few shows, soon.

Recap May 2022

June 2, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

The TOpoet.ca following blog grew to ! The WP map does show my hits have come from countries around the world. That Canada tops the list is unusual. That Poland (Witaj Polsko) & Ecuador (Hola lectores en ecuador) are in the top 10 is a surprise. Hello to my fans in Morocco (مرحباً أيها القراء في المغرب)!

Picture Perfect -119 sections, about 169,000 words posted so far with 20,000 approx to be edited then posted. These last sections took a fair amount editing, fresh writing & even some minor side plot development as I inch closer to the final big scenes now that the remains of the abducted children have been found.

Watched an amazing documentary ‘Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra’ which starts as history of the Australian aboriginal dance company & becomes a powerful mediation on the cost of creativity. The dancing is stunning, the music is incredible & the cost of creativity is heartbreaking. A must see that is streaming on TVO.

Watched Midsommar, bound to be come a season favourite. The depth of research was gratifying & the ritual aspects of the story were spot on & thought totally imaginary felt authentic. When I watch it again I will skip to when they arrive in Sweden as the first act is dreary & quickly drained my sympathy for any of the characters. By the time they got to the commune I was happy with all of them dying.

The extras on our edition of the DVD were banal though I was surprised that only one, of all the leads was American, as I assumed they all were until I heard their actual accents: Irish, Scottish, & that weird accent that is sort of Manx-African-Aussie. Sadly the soundtrack lp contains none of the Swedish chanting – so I didn’t buy it.

Read an excellent set of short stories: 13 Views of the Suicide Woods by Bracken MacLeod. Eerie, scary, inventive well-written tales that are Twilight Zone extreme with explicit gore & violence. Highly recommended for any horror fans.

May has been a month full of of activity, of breaking routines & getting dirty. Dirty digging in the dirt to get my garden ready for the summer. Some hostas were split & halves replanted else where in the garden. All the perennials returned, some worse for winter wear mind you. Loads of annuals planted – asters, alyssum, begonia, marigolds, snap dragons, impatiens, daisies, pansies, petunias, coleus, plus seeds are sprouting for four kinds of morning glory. It will a colourful garden for sure.

a side & b side 🙂 bluer than they appear here

Getting back to my roots by adding some Stonehenge Preseli bluestone to my rock/crystal collection. Part of Stonehenge is a ring of standing stones made of bluestone that is only found is & was quarried from Preseli, Wales. I did an esty search & ordered some.

Coming up in June is a day trip to Stratford to see Hamlet – after the excellent Richard III we saw in May I’m looking forward to this season’s take on Hamlet.

Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees – thanks 🙂 paypal.me/TOpoet

Richard III

Stratford the People’s Choice

Stratford Big Rig

Recap April 2022

May 1, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

The TOpoet.ca following blog grew with over 600 people get notification whenever I post a new blog! The WP map does show my hits have come from countries around the world. The USA tops the world list is interest but that Mauritius (Bonjour abonnés mauriciens) & Ghana are in the top 10 is a surprise. As you can see by the top 10 posts That’s Not Funny (https://topoet.ca/2022/04/26/thats-not-funny/) tops the list. F**k Cancer is a post from 10 years that made a trip to the top 10!

Picture Perfect: 114 sections, about 162,000 words posted so far with about 25,000 words left to be edited then posted. I also cut some 2000 words out this past week & figure there’ll be another 2000 to get chopped soon. So I could be done by the end of the summer.

Synchronicity often puts books together for me. Last month I finished Stephen Leacock’s London Travels eBook & next on that eBooks shelf was Sunlight & Shadow (1880) by John Bartholomew Gough (died 1886). He was a temperance orator! The book is his reflection on life in London as he brings his message & it is fascinating – & also a little sad as attitudes towards alcohol & poverty haven’t changed much since then. What is amazing is that his comments on being misrepresented by the press are still relevant, plus his ‘tips’ on speaking in public hold true for today as well.

Read ‘Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger’ by Brontez Purnell – this is hilarious & highly recommended. Unfiltered Sedaris-like essays on the vagaries & vulgarities of gay male life. I laughed out loud often. Be prepared for explicit sex & language.

Enjoying Servant of the People – the eerily prophetic Volodymyr Zelensky series. The writing is fearless in its political attack, the performances are spot on, though as it turns out Zelensky wasn’t acting, merely rehearsing for the role of a lifetime. Here in Canada Vision has been showing it with English subtitles which I presume aren’t censored or mistranslating what is being said.

I have been getting to one in-person recovery meeting a week. The return to meetings in Toronto has been slow even though the only requirement by meeting spaces is that we stayed masked. Like many I’m not comfortable with more than ten people in a large room, even when all are masked. A couple of the zoom meetings closed for their in person meeting but returned to zoom to run both. I think zoom recovery is here to stay.

Two visits to my dentist this month, so I’m not sure what my summer plans are after having that $$ turned into fillings. The other drain on my summer plans was a new TV, as the ‘old’ one was losing its plasma picture – it was like watching though a thin layer of smoke that was getting smokier by the week. We found it was impossible to find one without internet in its system 😦 Getting it set up was a maze of menus but once again we can enjoy full screen & amazing colour.

After the winter of our discontent, coming up in May, a day trip to Stratford to see Richard III. We will be driving regardless of this entreaty “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”

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– sweet, eh? paypal.me/TOpoet

February 2022 Recap

March 4, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

Top 10 countries this past month shows a few surprises with Bahrain & Sri lank making an appearance. That India tops the list is interest but that Bangladesh & Kenya are in the top 10 is a surprise. Most popular post was Clean Up – the ecology still remains a hot topic, my fave is Look At Me were Kazakhstan! Kuwait!

Picture Perfect: 106 sections, about 151,000 words posted so far with approx 33,000 to be edited then posted. I made more big cuts to the rough draft to smooth things to the eventual ending.

After we watched Clouzet’s ‘Quai des Orfèvres’ we went on to watch the equally amazing Le Diaboliques. I’ve seen it before but had forgotten the boarding school setting. The plot moves with the same clock-work precision as Quai. We have the Criterion edition & the extras are excellent. For censorship purposes the plot of the book was altered. The film has the husband ‘murdered’ – in the book it is the wife who is the supposed victim. Such overt lesbianism wasn’t allowable on the screen.

Reading: James Jones ‘From Here To Eternity’ that has been reissued intact. The original version (at nearly 900 pages then) had most of gay sections trimmed. To be honest I’ve never read that version so I don’t know how much was censored by the publisher. Set in Hawaii in the months before Pearl Harbour it is an endlessly detailed look at Army life on base & off. The gay life around the base is clearly represented – how soldiers exploited ‘queers’ for money, booze & sex. The men treat the women in the novel in such the same way. Jones’s depiction is more matter-of-fact than – look at those disgusting sad homos. He also doesn’t shy away from the reality of gay service men either. I can see why he was forced to make what cuts he made. By the time you get to the end of the novel you feel you’ve been through WWII. In the film the gay subplots have all been eliminated. Go figure.

I was disheartened & puzzled by the trucker convoy protests that accomplished nothing but irritating residents of Ottawa. What did they want? Attention, as much attention as they could get. A group that represented less that 1% of the population managed to grab 99% of the media. Too much, too late a many of their ‘demands’ were already slated to happen: loosening of passport & testing requirements.

The invasion of Ukraine is worrisome with the casual threat of nuclear taking me back to my childhood fears of anyone dropping the big one. That sense of powerless was puzzling then & now is merely depressing. Did we get through the pandemic only to be wiped out by brats playing dare you, Putin’s pride making it impossible for him to back down. I don’t see an upside to this for planet. At least Volodymyr Zelensky is great eye-candy in his endless supply of military green t-shirts.

Will there be a March recap? For sure, unless they drop the big one.

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The Late Charlie C Petch

October 24, 2021October 25, 2021 topoet1 Comment

I suppose I should start with the disclaimer – I’ve known Charlie over 20 years. We met when I immersed myself in the Toronto spoken word scene in 1999 at the Renaissance Cafe (now a butcher shop) when Valentino Assenza’s Cryptic Chatter was in flower. At that time Charlie hadn’t embarked on the arc of a life that took him from female cultural gender drag to his present trans masculine reality. An arc that can be on going.

The pieces in ‘Why I Was Late’ follow some of that arc. I’ve heard several them many times over years & appreciate Charlie’s ability to rewrite what you’ve just read with a closing line. This is writer who knows the power of the right ending – as opposed to the obvious ending. Charlie never takes the easy way out, never underestimates the intelligence of a reader to understand.

Directly or indirectly the pieces deal with growing up while living in a rigidly gendered culture – one in which even colours are not allowed to be neutral – i.e. pink for girls – serious writers wear blacks, greys & purples. But colour coding & print fabric condemnations are another post.

Charlie’s piece about being a lighting rigger shows how females in traditional male occupations have to struggle with the cultural acceptance that it is the females fault if men find them attractive. They become as adept at fending off uncalled for male attention as they do at doing their job. I suspect many females avoid those professions, not because they can’t do them but to avoid dealing with men’s rampaging testosterone.

Simple, direct language makes these pieces accessible to everyone. This a book of lived-in experience not of abstract musings on the silence of snow or the lambent light on prairie wheat but of people enjoying, struggling with the demanding emotions of self-realization, of stepping out of the culturally dictated colour codes & into the power to be.

Now in its second-printing this Brick Book publication is available from Brick Books as well as at most major & independent bookstores. Get it.

Bloody Footprints

the movie opens

on a busy sidewalk

someone with a knife

stabs a stranger

keeps on going

while the victim collapses

remember the knife

the flash of it

the thrust

blood blood blood

people stepping in it

as they step over the body

on their important way

bloody foot prints

quickly splotching the sidewalk

as the camera

pulls up up

the police arrive

the credits roll

over the expanding trail

of bloody foot prints

steps lead to smart shops

to offices

into elevators

down marble corridors

over carpets in hotel hallways

cafe floors

washroom stalls

blood gets on hands

trying to clean shoes

the fingerprints on mirrors

coffee cups

documents

dried flakes fall between

keyboard keys

smear smart phones

traces tracked undetected through

airport screening machines

splotches on luggage

the blood travels around the world

the sidewalk

with the outline of the body

is a pool of blood

after crime scene photos have been taken

after cellphone photos have hit the net

city works come to clean it up

the camera looks for the stabber

pushing through crowds

roving over heads shoulders

no faces

hands washing

blood pooling in sinks

almost dripping down the walls

of apartments

seeping out of TV screens

bloody footprints

lead up to a door

the bell rings

you reach to open the door

the closing credits roll

Recap September 2021

October 3, 2021October 3, 2021 topoetLeave a comment

Over the past month my TOpoet.ca following blog grew to 465! The WP map does show my hits have come from countries around the world. That USA & Canada top the list is no surprise but India is back to third place while Sweden & Bangladesh remain in the top 10 is a surprise. Hello Zimbabwe!

Most popular posts were Pandemic Poetry Project (https://topoet.ca/2021/09/16/pandemic-poetry-project/); Sunlight & Shadows (https://topoet.ca/2021/09/13/sunlight-and-shadows/). My particular favorite was Tales of Brave Trending (https://topoet.ca/2021/09/19/tales-of-brave-trending/).

My Tumblr is at 350 followers. 226 Twitter followers. Picture Perfect: 86 sections, about 126,000 words posted so far with approx 66,000 remaining to be edited then posted.

A surprisingly great watch has been American Horror Show: Double Feature. All the usual throat slashing & blood drinking but this time combined with a sharp, merciless look at creativity & the sacrifices made to be productive. In this case a drug that unlocks a writer’s, painter’s blocked inner potential. If you are brilliant & blocked you become genius, if you are mediocre & blocked you become a sort of stumbling grey person. Intense performances with Frances Conroy stunning & Macaulay Culkin excellent.

Finally got around to seeing Parasite – a visually & philosophically stunning film. Figuratively & literally the plot moves through cultural levels to a fugal climax that is breathtaking. The rich house set is an amazing piece of modern architecture – one of those sets like the astounding deco apartments that show up is 30’s movies but only existed in movies. The plot made me think of Dante’s Inferno as it takes us literally through the rings of Hell.

Also watched Valley of the Dolls, again 🙂 https://topoet.ca/2021/09/26/valley-of-the-bras/

Finished reading Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem (1928). McKay was part of the Harlem Renaissance & wrote several novels & books of poetry but his approach was ‘earthier’ & deemed not elevated enough to cast a favourable light on his race. The novel is a fun, fast slice of the night life, the work life, the love/sex life of the times by someone who lived those times. His hero has a strong emotional bromance with another male character: Wiki tells us “McKay was bisexual; he pursued relationships with both men and women throughout his life. He never officially “came out” (nor did anyone else in his time) nor explicitly stated his sexual preference.”

The highlight of the month was a day trip to Stratford to see Three Tall Women. https://topoet.ca/2021/10/01/ah-yes-i-remember-it-well/

The Tingler

as a boy

I couldn’t tell the truth

if my life depended on it

mot that I was a compulsive liar

or even lied that often

but under any sort of questioning

I was guilty

regardless of being innocent

Did you do that?

no – which was the truth

Go to your room

Until you are ready to tell the truth.

but

No buts. Now go you lying loser.

to avoid that banishment

I’d have to tell a lie

but I was even a worse liar

thanks to some movie I saw

where some sort of centipede

would materialize

around the spine

when you were scared

lying scared me

as much as telling the truth

I would feel those

million sharp legs

sinking into my back

my skin would tingle

The Tingler!

that’s what that movie was called

a lie would kill me

it would crush my heart

burst out of my nose

brain spattering everywhere

insect legs would dig out from my eyes

so I was afraid to lie

the punishment for telling the truth

was bad enough

not be be believed

not to be trusted was confusing

it was better to leave the room

let them think what they wanted

because the clearly truth

made no fucking difference

at that age

they made sure

I knew I was a lying loser

a useless dishonest kid

which I know now was a lie

and that’s the truth

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August 2021 Recap

September 5, 2021 topoet1 Comment

Over the past month my TOpoet.ca following stands at 464 ! The WP map does show my hits have come from countries around the world. That USA tops the list is no surprise but that Bangladesh moves up to 3rd spot & that Bahrain is in the top 10 is a surprise. China! Ireland! sill up there. Ola Spain. Most popular post was The Beaches (https://topoet.ca/2021/08/12/the-beaches-august-2021/ ). My personal fav is Summer Striptease https://topoet.ca/2021/08/23/summer-striptease/ .

My Tumblr is at 332 followers. Twitter at 229 followers. Picture Perfect: 82 sections, about 112,000 words posted so far with approx 72,000 to be edited then posted. Returning to the Rules For Monks on Wednesdays for this month – October will see a return of scary poems on Haunted Wednesdays.

Finally watched Rocketman & loved it. The film is a visual, sonic & emotional delight. Surreal & yet true to life. I liked the way the narrative flowed from music to reality to surreal so smoothly while inviting me in to the addictive mess his life had become. Taron Egerton did his own singing (unlike the Freddie Mercury bio in which the lead won the Oscar for best lip-syncing). Like many recovery stories this one is too much about the glamour & glitter of the downfall with the recovery dealt with in a minute. Highly recommended.

Another great watch was ‘Ma Vie en rose’ 1997 – a sweet, remarkable movie about gender identity. A young child – supposedly 7 – decides they are a boy-girl & experiences & survives cultural resistance & forced gender norms & transphobia. Excellent writing, unforced humour, great performances. Highly recommended for all ages.

read: Germinal is part of the Les Rougon-Macquart a collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by Emile Zola. This was, I think, the fourteenth in the series. It is brilliant. I’ve read two other ‘versions’ of it – each English translation is a rewrite of the original & retells it through the eyes of the translator. Zola is a French Dickens, only, unlike Dickens, his stories are grittier, darker & more directly sexual. If you don’t know Zola start with Terese Raquin. I have an Amazon Kindle collection of the complete novels & am about half-way through them all – I only have 150 hours of reading to finish them 🙂 Zola is one of my prime fiction influences.

Read ‘Farewell to the Sea’ the third novel in Reinaldo Arenas’ Pentagonia: a five novel “secret history” of Cuba. I’m re-reading all my Arenas, he’s another of my prime fiction influences. Farewell deconstructs the novel with free-wheeling interior monologues, ranted poetry, shifting p.o.v. in his no-holds-barred attack on Cuban justice, politics &queer sexuality. Funny, mythic & compelling. A mid-century masterpiece.

It has been a good month with no major events as things slowly open up after the long pandemic shutdown. Waiting for what form this vaccine passport will take. Will I have to give the wait person access to my OHIP info to order a meal? Probably works only for smart phones. Wondering how the need to prove covid status will effect things – rapid test costs $40 at Shoppers – so tickets for events that ask for that status will now cost $40 more. Friends looking for new jobs and/or apartments now searching the obituaries. Not so brave not so new world.