2012.12.01 — Anna Russell and Kris Boyd and Lamb Stew: Three Tiny Fushigis*

I have no idea how to begin this fushigi blog, except with a half-hearted apology on behalf of capital 'L' Life that slaps our faces with the strangest juxtapositions. So, I'll begin with the third of the three fushigis first.

Third of Three
I walked into my favourite local shop this morning to buy bread, meat and vegetables. I moved to the meat counter at the back of the store. Talking to Oxford, the butcher, was a woman I recognized from the memorial service for Kris Boyd that the three of us went to last year.

"Hello," I said to her. She looked at me. "Hello," she said. "I remember you."

"And I remember you. We sat together with Oxford at Kris's memorial."

"That's right!" she said.

Oxford piped in to re-introduce us. "Troy, this is Bill. Bill this is Troy." And then he added, "Did you know that it is one year ago on Monday that Kris was murdered?"

And I had forgotten. When I got home I confirmed that it is noted on the flip side of my weekly day planner. I would have looked at it on Monday, when I pre-view the upcoming week's events.

What makes this meeting of the three of us again so remarkable is that I remember that Troy lives across the lane from the store and visits it kind of like it is her extended pantry. I am in that store at least once a week, but frequently two or three times in a week. And today was the first day that I saw her in the store, within a few days of the anniversary of our first meeting as strangers because of the premature death of a mutual friend who worked with Oxford. And in the store, we re-met with Oxford. Weird.


Second of Three
This fushigi began with a newspaper item that ML brought to my attention to read on 2012.11.29. Pirates stays shipshape in 21st century: Gilbert and Sullivan operetta is as fresh and funny now as it was to Victorian audiences.

Within the piece is a reference to Anna Russell.

(A recommendation for those feeling the need for a quick course in G&S, Anna Russell, the Canadian comedienne of a bygone era, has a sly turn known as A Formula for Writing a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera, which you can listen to on YouTube [@ How to Write a Gibert & Sullivan Opera]; it's just as insightful as her notorious introduction to Wagner's Ring Cycle.)

I had to pause and really stretch my memory as to why that name rang a bell. Aha! I remembered that a long time ago — more than five years anyway — one of the CBCR2 radio hosts would broadcast her operatic satires occasionally. It was long enough ago that I've forgotten who would broadcast them.

Today, 2012.12.01, while driving during chores in the morning, I started up the car to head back home, and I heard today's host of This is My Music, already well into the show, introduce Anna Russell's satire of the French art song: Schlumph" & "Je N'Ai Pas la Plume de Ma Tante. And here's the link to the

impressive bio of today's host, which I learned later, long after I got home and made time to create this blog, was Janina Fialkowska.

To be honest, the name Janina Fialkowska meant nothing to me before today. But her hosting this show has changed that because unlike many of the hosts of this series, she seemed completely grounded and down to earth.

Her hosting was easy and lacked pretension. I was impressed when she played KD Lang's Olympic Games cover of Leonard Cohen's amazing song Halleleujah.

And when I came back into the car, I'd thought my radio had lost its mind because, when I turned it on, Rush was filling the air waves. But no, Janina had included them on her playlist because she has become friends with them after they met when they were given the Governor General's Award in March of 2012. Unfortunately I'm not a big

enough fan of Rush to know which song she played — I only caught the last minute or two — but for those who don't know them, they are a hugely successful lyrical pure rock band that are ranked third in total album sales behind The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Here's one of their biggest hits, Tom Sawyer from 1993, with over 9 million views since being uploaded to YouTube Aug 2007.

And, since I have now become aware of Janina, here's her playing Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 21, chamber version.

First of Three
For a variety of reasons including but limited to mild food poisoning and a dysfunctional work re-organization, this was a rough week for me. And so, on Tuesday

(2012.11.27) I decided to read something lighter than Chomsky's World Orders Old and New, which has gotten particularly grim. And so I decided to resume Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor. It was given to me by my friend NR and is set in my town. On Thursday I read an innocuous food description. (The book is about a Vancouver chef.)

… But when she cooked dinner that night, it had been a stew of lamb marinated in yoghurt and lemon juice. An old recipe, an open tribute (38).

Well, for the first time in 33 years of being together, my wife had decided on Wednesday (2012.11.28) that we would cook a lamb stew. So, on Thursday we did. After reading a half dozen recipes, the recipe she made included yoghurt and lime leaves.

It was delicious, although very rich.

Addendum 2012.12.03
At 10:02 pm I posted a Haiku chain within the Haiku Game, a thread in the Weekly Short Stories group in Goodreads. it was post # 2806. The poem is a play off the previous few poems, so it is a bit out of context here:

The dead pan mourner
Lightened her lips with the taste
Of pressed apple skins.

The grappa she sipped
Burned with the pain the grapes felt
at their being pressed.

The ice rink that was
Sank into the thawed mud pond
With what was once hard;

The skates that once swung
In the hands of the tall girl
became with her ghosts

Walking the knife's edge,
edging towards a wakeful
leap off the cliff's face

Hunting sunlight's ghosts,
the fragments of memory
danced like fruit flies.

Before going to bed, I did my usual fifteen to twenty minutes of pre-bed reading, and was amused to read, from, once again, Stanley Park:

… but now Jules looked over at him in a way she intended to communicate dissatisfaction, confirm she didn't find canned peaches minor.

"I have them [guinea hens] soaking in peach juice and some grappa," he said, sounding guilty already (although he continued to lay out his phyllo). "I'm going to grill them with fennel seeds. I stole it from Umberto" (95).

Yes, this is a small one, but an amusing one.

2011.12.16 — Kristy-Anne (Kris) Boyd: May 21, 1964 - December 3, 2011

The world is a strange place.

Wednesday morning came, as Wednesday's always do. I wake bleary in head and eye, but once I was mobile my wife commented that Kris's service was this afternoon, and so I needed to get my ass in gear. So I sped around doing unexpected morning shopping chores, but while doing them it came to me, unbidden and unexpectedly, that I needed to speak at Kris's celebration of life service. I hadn't seen her in a couple of years, and knew her only through my frequenting the small corner / specialty store at which she had until recently worked Saturday mornings, the day of my weekly shopping chores.

I wrote:

Hello:

I am here as a proof that our lives are bound to public strangers. If I hadn't talked to Kris — and as a retail customer that was certainly my prerogative — we would have remained strangers to each other. And my life would have been diminished. Diminished by her laughter and intelligent wit.

Kris was a big presence during my Saturday morning chores. We talked about nothing important — just food and family, their and our foibles, functions, fun.

This morning, after I woke enough to consider my day, my presence here as a stranger to almost all of you, a poem kept demanding to be heard. Now, Kris and I never talked poetry — who does? In fact, I can hear her laughing at the thought of it now. But for reasons inexplicable to me, I would like to read a poem.

A Ritual We Read to Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that other made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug, that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider —
lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford. From A Ritual We Read to Each Other, in Stories That Could Be True. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.

When it came time for me to read, I extemporized a bit outside the text, but read the poem. I felt my voice trembling as I spoke, and my eyes began to tear.

The venue is officially described as 'Grand Baby Ballroom at the Columbia Theatre', but this is a converted theatre from the 1930s that is now home to the local LaffLines Comedy Club. And that is just about as perfect for Kris as can be, because she loved to laugh and she was a real prankster.

Her best friend, whom I'd never met, described how Kris had managed to convince her to go into the back corner of the house one party night in order to pee. Kris had made a bet with the other guests, before she had got there, about who would be able to get her to pee in the yard first. "I won, I won!" Kris bellowed into the night as her best friend was squatting with her pants around her ankles.

And also in line with the prankster nature, the ceremony was filled with little glitches: was to begin at 2pm, but after a short introduction, nothing happened. Eventually (3:15) we were told that we were waiting for Kris's father, and to help ourselves to the food. As soon as people were milling around, the father arrived. Then when the photograph display was to go, the computer wouldn't go (even though the earlier test run was successful) and the PC had to be rebooted. Then, as the photos were running, the machine froze, and had to be restarted again.

Now, for the strangest thing of all. After I got home and supper was done with, I sat down to write something. I visited Goodreads WSSCC Haiku thread. M had with typical humour and skill created a pair of Haiku poems that ended with a girlfriend being directed to the narrator's grave in the smoking section of the graveyard. So I proceeded to create a response. At 7:59pm I posted:

Sorry M and Al, but nothing but doggerel came out this time, try as I might. (I wonder if I can blame the glass of chardonnay I had last night?)

If she found the spot
she would puff her cigarette,
hike up her short skirt.

Then inhale once more
before gracefully squatting
to pee on my grave.

While I was alive
I thought I was a gals' guy.
Not so, says the grass.

While writing this I did not make even the smallest tiniest connection between the story of Kris's pee pranking her best friend and my writing the above. It was only late last night, as I was contemplating how I wanted to put this blog together, that I saw their link. Isn't that just weird? The mind and the unconscious are truly magical things.

Kris, be well, Your brightness will be missed here. But I am sure your new world is being made brighter with your energy, in whatever form that takes.