Tunesday : Words

Words

(Gibb, Barry /Gibb, Maurice /Gibb, Robin)

Performed by Bee Gees

Smile an everlasting smile
A smile can bring you near to me
Don't ever let me find you gone
'Cause that would bring a tear to me

This world has lost its glory
Let's start a brand new story
Now my love, right now 
There'll be no other time 
And I can show you how, my love

Talk in everlasting words
And dedicate them all to me
And I will give you all my life
I'm here if you should call to me

You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say

It's only words, and words are all I have
To take your heart away

You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say

It's only words, and words are all I have 
To take your heart away
It's only words, and words are all I have 
To take your heart away
It's only words, and words are all I have 
To take your heart away

I had planned to follow up last week's Village People tune with one of my favourite songs from my other favourite disco group. As I said before, I was only allowed to have one poster up on my bedroom wall at a time, and when the Village People came down, the Bee Gees went up: and not that geeky looking (who are those other guys??) album cover I selected for up there, but the poster from the Spirits Having Flown album; all flowing manes and hairy chests (at least for Barry; the only Bee Gee who mattered to me; still not as hunky as little brother Andy). 

I could have shared Love You Inside Out (which gave me the chills as a girl) or Tragedy (and the hil-AR-ious lyrics that kids sang at school: Tragedy! When you're on the john and the paper's gone, it's tragedy!) But in the end, I chose Words just so I could write about something that's been on my mind a lot lately: um, words.

When universal same-sex marriage was legalised in Canada in 2005, Dave and I didn't quite agree on it. Dave -- as a classic liberal despite protesting that he's a conservative-type guy -- thought that it was a non-issue: To him, "marriage" is just a word, and if using that word would make gay people happy, then more power to them. I, on the other hand, believe that words matter and we redefine them at some risk. I know how this makes me sound, so let me be clear: I was horrified by the stories that came out during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, where same-sex partners were denied access to hospitals to visit their dying spouses (because that's for "families" only), or that insurers refused to pay out death benefits to same-sex widows/ers, or even that health insurance that should cover an employee's entire family was denied to same-sex unions: these attitudes were ugly and totally unjust. But these are mainly American stories: health care here in Canada has always been universal and all common-law unions have long been recognised, with same-sex partners enjoying the legal benefits of marriage since 1999. With all of the rights, privileges, and protections of any marriage, all that same-sex couples were missing was the actual word "marriage", and while Dave thought they should have it if they want it, I did (and still do) worry about a social movement having the power to redefine words that have traditionally meant one thing; a definition that we have agreed on as a community for a very long time. 

That doesn't mean that I'm a slippery-sloper: I wasn't one of those bemoaning, "What's next? Legalising polygamy? Bestiality?" I understand that's a stupid argument, but look where we are now. The Canadian government recently introduced a bill, reaffirming that we consider forced and polygamous marriages to be "barbaric" and against our values; giving Immigration the power to block men with multiple wives from coming here. Now I read that Amnesty International is scolding Canada for this position, saying that we're simply forcing the polygamous underground and endangering the forced/child brides. So, are they insisting we should expand the definition of marriage again? Legalise polygamy? It was not that long ago that we all agreed that polygamy was wrong, but shows like Big Love and Sister Wives have likely normalised it -- and while I would agree that what happens amongst consenting adults is totally fine, it's easy to forget that the hard-core polygamous societies are those like in Bountiful, B.C. (where barely teenaged girls are married off to old men, sometimes across national borders) and in Pakistan (where girls can be married off into any situation as young as 10). As for the bestiality, after an article about a John Oliver segment on transgender rights, the top comment was:

Are we soon going to be done with all of this nonsense? Just live and let live. Do whatever you want in the privacy of your own home. It's no one else's business as long as you're not hurting anyone. Enough already. You want to screw a cat. Go ahead. Mess with a monkey. Have at it. I've really had my fill of sexual issues on the news every friggin' night when there are so many other important issues we should be dealing with. 

While I understand that she was trying to be funny, this was the most liked comment and no one was standing up for the rights of those cats and monkeys! (Okay, that's me trying to be funny...) And speaking of John Oliver's segment...

"Woman" is another word that I'm uncomfortable redefining. And again I need to add a caveat: Everyone should be free to express themselves any way they need to and it's a tragedy every time a person feels trapped or discriminated against, or is so hopeless that they commit or even consider suicide. I 100% believe that a person can know that they were born into the wrong body and transitioning to match the outer shell to the inner life is brave and necessary. My comments don't come from hate. Caitlyn Jenner -- whether she really wanted it or not, but as a long-time reality-show figure, I assume she did -- is now the face of transgender issues. And I kind of felt sorry for her when I saw the Vanity Fair cover. I have total empathy for a person who knows she was always a woman trapped in a man's body, but why would this aging grandparent think that "becoming a woman" had to mean "becoming a 1950s pinup"? Jon Stewart -- as the gatekeeper for all right-thinking people -- became sanctimonious about the media's reaction (as though he himself is separate from "the media") in now reducing Jenner to her looks:

"Caitlyn, when you were a man, we could talk about your athleticism, your business acumen," Stewart said. "But now you're a woman, which means your looks are really the only thing we care about."

But, you know what? If Jenner didn't want to be judged on her looks, she would have been wearing a Hillary Clinton pantsuit on that cover; you know, like someone her own age. Being a woman doesn't mean getting double-d implants; I am not less of a woman because I don't have double-ds. So what is a woman now? As a word, "woman" used to have an agreed-upon meaning; one that could be spotted at birth. But now, I understand that The Vagina Monologues is undergoing a rewrite because it's being protested on university campuses; it's considered sexist because not every woman has a vagina. Caitlyn Jenner has apparently not yet decided if she'll get rid of her penis, and although John Oliver's point was that that's none of my business, it's mind-boggling to me that no one is pushing back against this: a woman trapped in a man's body is going to transition...into a woman trapped in a man's body, plus breast implants and hair extensions. Okay, fine. I understand that society has decided that the word "woman" was up for redefinition without a fight, but did no one else really find it unbelievable that Twitter has a bot that automatically changes "he" to "she" in any tweet mentioning Caitlyn Jenner? No one can publicly disagree with the redefinition? As a conservative person, it's the groupthink that bothers me, but okay, it's a fight lost; progressives get to redefine words and the outrage machine of social media gets to attack anyone who disagrees with the newspeak, but what about...

Sport? When the erstwhile Bruce Jenner was a young man, he took gold in an Olympic Decathlon, making his one of the fittest male bodies on the planet. We now learn that even then, Caitlyn was Jenner's true persona, but what does that mean for the future of sport? If Caitlyn was in her youth today, should she be allowed to compete as a woman in the Olympics? There's no money in women's pro sports, but would that change if the WNBA  was filled with transgendered teams? I don't mean to make something out of nothing here, but currently, it's considered a major issue of justice that the Olympics allows transgendered women to compete as women only if they "have legal recognition in their country, hormone therapy to 'minimise gender-related advantages' and proof of at least two years of living in their 'newly assigned gender' after SRS", while not allowing non-surgical trans to compete outside the gender they were born into. Why are transgendered women allowed to compete at all? In what world would it have been fair for Caitlyn Jenner to have competed against women at the Olympics? Why are we who were born as physical women -- we who have had to navigate the embarrassment of first periods, feared walking alone at night, suffered sexism in the workplace, submitted to physically stronger males (even if for me, that just meant my brothers twisting my arm behind my back for a laugh) -- why would we be so willing to look at Caitlyn Jenner today -- someone who has lived 65 years in the privileged life of an American white man, complete with high-profile marriages to desirable women and his photo on boxes of Wheaties -- and say, "Welcome. Based on your say-so, you are 100% the same as I am; 100% woman." And why would we, the so-called weaker sex, welcome an expansion of the word "woman" that would force us out of sport?

And why can we expand the definition of "woman", but not that of "black"? This whole Rachel Dolezal story -- where a white woman self-identifies as black, and therefore lived as a black person, even becoming the President of a NAACP chapter -- is consistently being used to illustrate why Jenner's situation makes sense, but someone like Dolezal is just mentally unbalanced.

Being transracial is hardly similar to ‘feeling black’ … It’s not like gender dysphoria either – the politics of race and gender are not interchangeable in this context. Unlike many black Americans, Rachel’s family background does not carry the trauma of slavery and institutionalised racism.

But unlike born-women, Jenner doesn't have a personal history of gender-based trauma or experienced institutionalised sexism, so what's the difference between her and Dolezal? (Hint: the Social Engineers say so.) Okay, to stretch the point to its ridiculous limit: What about these transabled folks? There are apparently people who feel that they are "disabled" yet stuck in "normal" bodies. These people cut off limbs, blind themselves, break their backs to self-paralyze -- all because their outsides don't match how they feel on the inside. There was a time when a man wanting to have his penis cut off was considered a mental issue, so as society has evolved (correctly, I figure) on that issue, what about the transabled? Should doctors be encouraged to severe spines for those who so desire? Do we change some definitions to avoid offending?

Now, not to keep going on about Jenner, but do men have a problem with redefining the word "Dad"? While glancing over the news headlines on Father's Day, I saw that Caitlyn had posed with the entire Jenner/Kardashian family, but despite looking like I'm overly concerned about these people here, I didn't really care and didn't click for more info, just assuming that all good-thinking people should get the message that becoming a woman didn't stop Caitlyn Jenner from being a Dad. Fine. Know what did bother me? On facebook, I saw a widely shared story on Father's Day with a headline like, "Any woman can be a Mom but it takes a superhero to be a Dad, too". Yes, you gotta be a superhero to be a single Mom, but does raising your kids by yourself make you their Dad, as well? Even in a lesbian household, I would argue that neither of those two women is a Dad. Why did no one push back against that? Why did I see even men sharing that story? Why do I seem to be the only person who worries about these constantly shifting definitions?

In a world where "art" is anything an artist says it is (A shit-smeared Virgin Mary? An unmade bed?), a President at an impeachment hearing can unironically say, "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is", where gender is a "social construct" that has nothing to do with physical attributes, it seems to me that redefining commonly-understood terms undermines the commonly-held beliefs upon which we originally constructed our society. Of course legalising same-sex marriages didn't cheapen or delegitamise my own marriage, but the social forces that convinced people that "marriage" is only a word without an inherent, immutable definition are the same social forces that are saying that nothing is immutable: not gender, not justice, not society (and don't even get me started on God -- even as a concept, it is no longer fashionable to have beliefs of any kind). 

And in the end: It's only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away

*****

Dangit, after spending a couple of hours getting all that off my chest, I go to facebook and see that Mark Steyn said it all today, and better:

Headline from this morning's Politico: 

It's Time to Legalize Polygamy 

Why group marriage is the next horizon of social liberalism 

The right never learns that there is no last concession, only a nano-second's respite to catch your breath and then (to reprise another Kathy Shaidle line) more KY for that slippery slope. 

Someday soon some judge somewhere will rule in favor of polygamy, not because the left is especially invested in this particular "expansion" of rights but because of the opportunities it provides for further vandalism of what's left of the old order. That's what matters. 

That's why the US Supreme Court decision was a twofer for the left. As I said the other day, even if one disagrees, one can respect the process in Dublin (gay marriage by referendum) or London (gay marriage legislated by the people's representatives in parliament). But the American left preferred to go the Supreme Court route - because, if you're hardcore about these things, to divine a right to gay marriage in an 18th century parchment or to insist that "established by the State" refers not primarily to states but to the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a totalitarian act that destroys both law and language by rendering them meaningless: what's not to like? After the incoherence of John Roberts' health-care opinion and then the next day's effusions on the profundity of gay love and loneliness by Anthony Kennedy, the Radclyffe Hall of American jurists, the justices' total capitulation to the zeitgeist is all but complete. Modifying Wonderland's Queen, the Supreme Court of Wonderland seems to work on the principle of "Verdict first - reasoning afterwards, if at all." 

In the gloomier moments of my own case, my lawyers and I occasionally discuss how, if it all goes pear-shaped in DC, we'll be off to SCOTUS. But we're not Larry Flynt in the Eighties anymore. It would seem to me rather complacent to assume these days that there are five votes for free speech at the US Supreme Court.

And I'd like to make one more comment: I intentionally didn't mention the U.S. legalising same-sex marriage because it isn't a true corollary to what happened in Canada in 2005. Until this past week, same-sex unions in the States didn't have the same rights as those enjoyed within traditional marriages, so they were fighting for more than just the word. I'm not impressed that it was the U.S. Supreme Court who decided to impose this by fiat -- any more than I was impressed by our own Chief Justice using the term "cultural genocide" to refer to Canada's past treatment of Natives; a redefinition of terms I was complaining about just yesterday -- and want to agree with Steyn that all of these redefinitions are about vandalism of what's left of the old order. That was my point, too.

Up Ghost River: A Chief's Journey Through the Turbulent Waters of Native History

We were all created by Gitchi Manitou. That means we are all related to each other. We were all made of the same stuff. We are all part of the same family. Humans. The Four-Leggeds, or the animals, and the trees, the Standing-Ones. Everything you see around you is part of your family, the people, plants, the trees, and even the rocks. We need all these things to live, and they need us. We are all related. We are all part of the cycle of life. What you see around you must be treated with respect. So that means that we honour the animals when we go out hunting. We thank them for the life that they give us. For giving us their flesh so that we can live. And it means that you are good to your brother when you are looking after him. You do not hit him. You are not rude to him. You treat him like you want to be treated yourself. That's what it is to follow the Red Road.

Edmund Metatawabin, former Chief of the Fort Albany First Nation, has written a memoir which, with the recent release of the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, couldn't be more timely. In the 1950s, Metatawabin was sent to the St. Anne's Residential School (now considered the worst of the worst of these abusive institutions), where he was routinely starved, whipped, sexually abused and humiliated, electrocuted with a homemade electric chair, forced to eat his own vomit – all perpetrated by sadistic Catholic nuns, priests and brothers. 

Not only does Metatawabin share these early horrors, but he paints a sorry picture of everyday life on his northern reserve: with people in debt to the Hudson's Bay Company (and trappers captive to the ever-changing prices they can get for furs); a dozen people living in a two room house (and a seven year wait for government housing); residents not allowed to fell a tree or build themselves a solid home on “their own land” without government approval; and the Catholic Church having undue influence. 

I used to joke with my friends about reserve life when I was at Trenton University. Clayton, Simone and me hanging around at the Commoner bar, laughing about the crowded little houses and the lengthy welfare line. We had ridiculed the Indian Agents and the Indian Act. We japed the so-called Treaty Days, a government-enforced celebration, where the RCMP officers used to come to town to remind us that they'd ripped us off – sorry, to remind us of a historic agreement that no sooner was signed than ignored, like the rest of the broken promises. Each year, my parents lined up with the others, along the hallways of St. Anne's, to get their Treaty Day money. Four dollars per person, as stipulated by the treaties. Same as it ever was. Given to us in the places where we were whipped.

Although Metatawabin was able to find love, get married, and pursue higher education, he suffered PTSD from his years at St. Anne's and fell into a self-destructive cycle of alcohol abuse and remorse. He was eventually saved by a Native-run Healing Circle approach to rehab, and as corny as it may sound, I was in tears as Metatawabin made his breakthrough:

The heat was so intense that I could not breathe. It pulled me into a sadness that had been there for as long as I could remember. Tears mixed with the steam that drenched my face. I cried until I was nothing but dry heat. I lay down on the floor, where it was cooler, and my chest sank into the damp earth. George began to sing, and one by one, the others joined in. Their voices resonated deep within my flesh. I listened as my skin danced with their melodies. Until their last notes had faded into the heat. Then I tried to get up, but I felt a heavy weight, like a dog, on my chest. The weight began to fill my chest, pulling me into a darkness deeper than night. I let go and began to fall. The thick black air pulled me downwards, into the ground. I felt the soil beneath my fingers. I was on the floor, weak and part of the dirt. I was the Great Mother Earth. I was Gitchi Manitou and his Creation.

Finally freed from alcoholism, Metatawabin returned to Fort Albany, was elected Chief, and has spent the last years using traditional Cree knowledge to heal the up-and-coming generations, has been a Native activist – successfully leading a lawsuit against his abusers (although true justice would have seen more people punished, and more severely) and compelling government agents to allow his band to gain some economic autonomy – while writing and lecturing on his experiences. In every way, this man is a hero.

Usually when I read a book like this, I'm left wringing my hands, wondering, “As awful as it is, what can I do about this?” And most compellingly, Metatawabin has a list of suggestions: Abolish the Indian Act, support Native sovereignty, advocate for political change (better representation in Parliament), help youth in education, target youth suicide, and support Native artists. What Metatawabin is asking for isn't more money or some fantasy return to precontact Native life, and what he is asking for is totally reasonable, and I would hope, doable; a walk together along the Red Road.

As a book, Up Ghost River isn't terribly well-written – as the excerpts might suggest – despite Metatawabin using an award-winning journalist as a cowriter, but the material it contains is too important for me to give it any less than five stars. This is a book that every Canadian should read – not because we settlers need to be made to feel guilty about the actions of our ancestors, but because those actions have consequences that we can address today.

Finalists – 2015 Trillium Book Award

Margaret Atwood : Stone Mattress
Dionne Brand : Love Enough 
Kate Cayley : How You Were Born
James King : Old Masters
Thomas King : The Back of the Turtle
Edmund Metatawabin : Up Ghost River 

Of these, my favourite read was Up Ghost River, but congrats to Kate Cayley for the win.

*****

Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report came out, I've been following the debate about whether or not "cultural genocide" is an appropriate phrase, and for the most part, I've been on the side against its use. "Genocide" as a term means something specific, and although even one child dying in a Residential School was too many, the Canadian government's goal was never to kill off our Native population, in contrast to what happened south of us. The loudest spokesperson against the use of "cultural genocide" has been Conrad Black, and yesterday he had this to say:

With regret I respond, briefly, to the urgings of many readers who have asked me to return to the vexed subject of the treatment of the native peoples. In general, that treatment has been shabby, though increasingly well-intentioned and well-funded. There is much to apologize for and I believe in the value of confession, repentance and trying to make amends. But conditions are aggravated and not ameliorated by exaggeration and by putting on the airs, on behalf of Canada, of a criminal nationality that has been guilty of crimes against humanity. 

I cannot allow to pass without comment the accusation against me by the former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie Farber, of a “dastardly minimizing of Canada’s genocidal history.” While he cites his own tragic family history in the attempted extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis and their collaborators, I do not believe anyone ever has or could question my credentials as a philosemite, and Farber’s acute awareness of what a real genocide is makes more odious and irresponsible his assimilation of murdering six-million Jews (and six-million non-Jews) in death camps with the tawdry, often shameful and inexcusable, treatment of the native people of Canada, by the French and British colonists and frequently by Canada as an autonomous country. The distinction between satanic crime and reprehensible misgovernment must not be blurred, and the failure to make that distinction assassinates historic truth, trivializes the Nazi Holocaust and mass murders of non-Jews, mortally abuses the language, all Western languages, and wilfully assaults the moral basis from which Canada must address and do justice to the profound problem of the native people. The massacre inventors are just as odious as the Holocaust deniers. 

I have been defamed by more substantial figures than Bernie Farber (and there are few people I would rather share that distinction with than Jeffrey Simpson, as in this case). But in his mindless zeal, Farber dishonours the Jews and the Canadians, and does no favours for the native people. All Canadians have a right to be in Canada. North America’s original inhabitants (that is, when the Europeans arrived in the 15th century and afterwards) did not own or occupy this continent; their population was too sparse for that and they had no right to object to the arrival of the Europeans, though they certainly have every right to object to much that has happened since. 

What is distressing is the ant-like inroads made on the national consciousness by what is an undisguised effort by Farber, and only a thinly disguised attempt by more substantial commentators, to place this country squarely in the same moral position as Nazi Germany, a country that premeditatedly murdered 12-million innocent people, and unleashed war on almost all of Europe and northeast Africa in which more than 25-million citizens of other countries died violently, and which led to the occupation of every square millimetre of Germany by powers it has attacked. Those powers, after reasonable due process, sentenced the surviving German leaders to death or lengthy imprisonment, in reasonable compliance with international law. I am skeptical of the practice of trying former enemies and disapprove of the death penalty, but the post-war trials of Nazi leaders were serious attempts to provide due process for the surviving authors of the greatest crimes in history. The comparison of Goering, Kaltenbrunner, later Eichmann and other Nazi criminals (most of the prominent leaders committed suicide before they could be tried and executed), with John A. Macdonald, is unspeakable.

I truly do find that to be a compelling argument, while agreeing with Edmund Metatawabin that much work is left to do. I didn't want to put any criticisms in the body of my review, but there are two facts that are nagging at me: First of all, unlike the bush planes flying in and scooping up children from unwilling families as Richard Wagamese wrote about in Indian Horse, Metatawabin was sent to St. Anne's at his mother's request. When he tried to complain to her once about getting whipped at school, she shrugged and said it was the same for her when she attended -- so is it cultural genocide when attendance (in this case) wasn't imposed by the government? Also, when Metatawabin met his wife in the 1970s, she was a teacher at St. Anne's and was appalled by his stories. I keep reading that the last Residential School was closed in 1996, and I assumed that they were horrifying cesspools right up until the end, but if that's not quite true, then that should be made clear (and it might be in the T & R report, but I fear it's not an impartial document if it uses the term "cultural genocide"...)

A couple more thoughts: The other day there was this article about the French woman who killed eight of her babies because she says they were a result of incest with her own father. The leading comment following the article was:

Recently a woman jumped a red light in a truck in saskatoon killed two teens. Claimed her parents were messed up from residential school abused her. Her lack of parenting skills led to death of her son and in grief she turned to drink. Banned multiple times from driving she still did and killed two precious teens ruined countless lives. Did not get a custodial sentance due to mitigating circumstances. How is this woman any different ? She needs help not jail . Horrific what people can do

I 100% believe in the Canadian government stepping up and making amends for the abuses these people had to suffer, but I am not very sympathetic to this story -- a woman's whose parents were "messed up from residential school" didn't get a custodial sentence after the vehicular homicide of two teens? I appreciate that the healing Metatawabin discovered isn't available to everyone, but his story highlights what can be achieved; before tragedy strikes.

And to be fair, even after nodding along with Conrad Black's conclusions, I found this comment following his article to be powerfully persuasive:

So strapping a 5 year old (years later turns out to be my dad) kid to a bed for 8 months until he learned to speak proper English at Mohawk Indian Residential is not cultural genocide.  

Placing First Nations children into an electric chair until they spoke proper English at St Anne's Indian Residential school is also not cultural genocide.

Expropriation of First Nations lands and resources under the Oliver Act to steal first nations lands and resources legally under Canadian Law isn't an act of cultural genocide?

Involuntary sterilization and mandatory attendance of Indian Residential Schools under Canada's Apartheid laws of the Indian Act is not Cultural Genocide??

I guess just like what Steve Harper said about the Arabs calling dead Palestinian women and children "Human Shields", I guess the dead Jews during world war 2 and First Nations children at Church run Indian Residential Schools were just a whole lot of Human Shields. 

That's an angry man, and he has every right to be angry. How do we get onto the Red Road together? I'm still confused, and that's why I think every Canadian should read Up Ghost River and join the conversation.

Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

In an afterword, Margaret Atwood claims that her book Stone Mattress isn't meant to be a collection of stories but of tales: Calling a piece of short fiction a “tale” removes it at least slightly from the realm of mundane works and days, as it evokes the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tales. And this is certainly the effect that Atwood achieves with this collection: with murder, mayhem, and misadventure; examples of genre fiction, and even more interestingly, an examination of genre authors; and a persistent presence of the greatest horror facing us all – that of growing old – Atwood has assembled nine tales that, while shining a light on our mundane world, don't quite reside within it. As the geologist who explains the titular stone mattress formations of the far north concludes, it's all quite fascinating.

The first three stories are linked: In Alphinland, the recently widowed Constance must negotiate an ice storm – with the disembodied advice of her dead husband – and along the way, she reminisces about the fantasy series she had written over the years. Initially begun to pay the rent for her and her serious-poet-boyfriend Gavin, the faerie and dragon world that Constance created was always considered vaguely embarrassing, even by her eventual husband Ewan; despite ultimate critical acclaim and a decent income. In Revenant, we get a glimpse of the aging Gavin: managed by his much younger third wife and horrified to discover that a grad student who wants to interview him is only interested in his poetry as it relates to Constance's work. In Dark Lady, we visit with Marjorie – the “other woman” who broke up Constance and Gavin – and see how she and her twin brother are living out their senior years. These three stories are very strong and touch on interesting themes such as art and aging and memory and loss. 

In a similar later story – The Dead Hand Loves You – an author remembers his own impoverished early adulthood and the circumstances that led to him writing the “International Horror Classic” that would eventually anchor him down in more ways than one. Like with Constance's fantasy writings, it was interesting to see the evolving attitudes towards genre fiction and its authors (imagine a panel at a convention with a Freudian and a Jungian nearly coming to blows over hidden symbolism), and as these are repeating themes, I imagine they are of interest to the sometimes sci-fi writer Atwood herself. 

Although some murderous thoughts are present in the above stories, they come front and center in The Freeze-Dried Groom and Stone Mattress – the latter tale dreamed up while Atwood and her husband were on a Northern Expedition, for the amusement of the passengers. In a way, this alternate writing method makes for a different kind of story, but for what it says about evolving attitudes towards women and their sexuality, its main character, Verna, would have had much to talk about with Constance and Marjorie.

Two more stories stand out as not quite belonging here, and it wasn't too surprising to learn in the afterword that they were commissioned as writing challenges by McSweeney's and The Walrus. In one – Lusas Naturae – an unnamed birth defect causes a little girl to be considered a monster (a tale complete with torches and pitchforks that put me in mind of Robertson Davies' Cornish Trilogy), and in the other – I Dream of Zenia With the Bright Red Teeth – we revisit the characters from The Robber Bride as they negotiate their own senior years. It's funny, but just as I was thinking to myself, “It's refreshing that Atwood didn't put any of her angry politics in this collection”, there's Charis and her activist rants. 

My absolute favourite story here is the last one: Torching the Dusties. While most of these tales concentrate on aging characters, the final one is set in a retirement home and introduces us to people who are attempting to retain their dignity even as their bodies begin to fail:

Like herself, he must be worried about how he smells: that acid, stale odour of aging bodies so noticeable when all the Ambrosiads are assembled in the dining room, their base note of slow decay and involuntary leakage papered over with applied layers of scent – delicate florals on the women, bracing spices on the men, the blooming rose or brusque pirate image inside each of them still fondly cherished.

When a worldwide movement – Our Turn – shows up at the gates of the building with placards and baby-faced masks, threatening to kill off the old folks to make room for the new, Atwood writes with black humour and intelligence – all the while underscoring the residents' humanity and worth. This tale makes a perfect bookend with Constance's initial story: each has a widow suffering flights of fancy who needs to negotiate danger with only a phone call from a distant child for support. 

In addition to the big and engaging themes in this collection, there were so many nice little writing moments. I really liked this observation: The traffic is putrid. What is it about winter that causes people to drive as if their hands are feet? And in the same passage, I loved that Atwood included objects that only a Canadian would understand – gets himself a Timmy's double-double – or that only a Torontonian would understand – He zigzags down towards the Gardiner, which maybe won't have fallen down yet. Of course Margaret Atwood doesn't need explain herself. And in another tale, this read as a perfect description:

As for her mother, she'd been a strict Presbyterian with a mouth like a vise grip, who despised poetry and was unlikely to have been influenced by anything softer than a granite wall.

I wouldn't exactly call myself an Atwood fan, but I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Maybe she has mellowed, maybe I have mellowed, but either way, there's no denying that Margaret Atwood is still an important and inventive voice.

Finalists – 2015 Trillium Book Award

Margaret Atwood : Stone Mattress
Dionne Brand : Love Enough 
Kate Cayley : How You Were Born
James King : Old Masters
Thomas King : The Back of the Turtle
Edmund Metatawabin : Up Ghost River 

Of these, my favourite read was Up Ghost River, but congrats to Kate Cayley for the win.

Martin Sloane

Some people believe in a connected world in which every one thing is cognate with every other thing, the bell tolling for you, for me. In this kind of world, orders are revealed within our own order, our beginnings woven with other beginnings, endings with endings. In this way, life is seen to rhyme with itself. For a long time this was my own religion.

Martin Sloane, simply put, is a perfect book; why did I resist reading it for so long? There's a mystery central to its plot, and coupled with the poet Michael Redhill's lyricism and insight, I was urgently and gently drawn along right up to an ending that left me in tears – not tears of sadness, but the tears that come from being touched deeply; from recognising, aha, that's right, that's how it is to live a life.

In 1984, Jolene Iolas was a university student in upstate New York, and after seeing (and being denied the right to purchase) a piece of art by the little-known Martin Sloane, she struck up a correspondence with the Irish-Canadian artist. Once they met, the two became May-December lovers; she acting as his muse and anchor for eight years, until the night he disappeared. Gotta go. While this – and its aftermath – is essentially the plot, Martin Sloane is about so much more: about art and memory and love and absence.

Firstly, I loved the art that Martin created: primarily dioramas made from found objects in small display cases; this was modern art that I could understand (unlike that described in The Blazing World or The Woman Upstairs), and as presented here, I would love to see a gallery show of these works. (As Martin and his art were based on the real-life Joseph Cornell, that's approximately possible.) And maybe it's just my literal mind at work, but it felt like genius to me that Martin's childhood was eventually revealed, spotlighting what events would have inspired each of his most famous pieces. In fact, so many of his childhood experiences involved capturing something within something else that his life's work felt inevitable: A fetus in a jar full of formaldehyde; a woodcock in a box trap; or this conversation with a little girl in the TB ward of a hospital after another boy died –

He was inside his mum once, she said, like she was reciting a nursery rhyme, and lived in a house. Everything is inside something else, even the air. But now that boy's in a box and he's in the ground. A worm will eat his eyes, and a bird will eat the worm, and then he'll be able to see his mum from the sky.

That's how we recapture what we've lost, isn't it? By finding a way to put what we've loved into a box, even if it's just within ourselves. When Molly discovers that Martin's father had never seen one of his boxes, she states, “Well, at least he's in them. It's not a bad place for a person's soul to end up.” On its face, I found that to be a profound statement, but when later events reveal the irony of that exchange, it was elevated to genius. 

Jolene, too, holds her memories in diorama-like imagery; ideas that could be preserved in shadow boxes if she had the skill to make them: A willow's roots search for underground streams “like someone reaching their hand down through your roof at night”; she remembers her time with Martin “as if I were walking by a window where someone I used to know was sitting, looking almost like their old self”; her childhood memories are a disconnected jumble of gardening gloves, dusty shag carpet, a banana-seated bicycle, and jackdaws “creaking in the air over gravestones”. She also laments what is lost to history, like the crumbling walls of a once awe-inspiring castle or the ancient gravestones she finds with their names eroded by wind and rain, “Their stories, with their scandals, their love affairs, their unexpected kindnesses, all of it gone”. Additional layers of meaning are added as Jolene retraces Martin's childhood in Ireland and discovers those things that he had remembered wrong, and those that he had invented.

If it's true as Martin says at one point that people get together in order to have a place outside of themselves to store their personal narratives, Martin Sloane perfectly demonstrates this. Characters are haunted by their childhoods, possessed by relationships, and in Molly's case, tortured by a (likely) misunderstanding. With this book, Redhill has created art on so many different levels, and in the end, has captured profound and abiding truths. A perfect novel; this is why I read.

Actually, I do know why I avoided reading this book, despite it being recommended to me repeatedly by goodreads: I thought it was written by the author of Clara Callan (which turns out to be Richard B. Wright - not even close to the same name, weird), and although I didn't review books back when I read that, I do remember being very annoyed by it. On a happier note, now I have the opportunity to read more from the wonderful Michael Redhill.

Love Enough

No argument in the world is ever resolved. Resolving would suggest some liquid in which arguments could be immersed, perhaps love. But it must be love enough.

Love Enough by Dionne Brand is more a collection of impressions than a complete narrative, and as such, it made for an uneven reading experience for me. 

In a multicultural city like Toronto, it's appropriate for the Trinidad-born Brand to note in passing and document the Somali economist who speaks five languages and now drives a cab, the Chilean journalist who fled Pinochet's regime, the broken woman who wanders the streets and washes her hands and face with Clorox. Many domestic scenes are lingering in my brain: the middle-aged Italian woman who seeks respectability in dowdy housedresses when her daughter goes wild (a wildness she secretly supports); the thug who pressures his hard-working sister for money but runs to her like a little boy when he thinks she just wants to talk; the woman who believes that the radio said the City of Toronto was sending one hundred musicians – not the one hundred policemen her partner insists that she heard – to confront the violence of the Jane and Finch neighbourhood. In all of these situations, all anyone is looking for is love; love enough.

Brand is a novelist and a poet (she was Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2009-12) and she brings a poetic sensibility to her writing. Sometimes this results in some brain-bending grasps at profundity like, “She had forgotten, of course, that when you are not in a position to order your life, disorder has its own order. Which is not like the disorder of order but like the order of disorder.” Or even more head-scratchingly:

And as much as people might think otherwise, sex is a limited idiom, not a whole language – it gets exhausted. Like a conversation that peters out into what we don't know and can't express. No doubt there are bursts of eloquence, but the prosody isn't always affective. And sometimes, just sometimes, the sex becomes less and less compelling like a stilted idiolect.

But more often, I felt like Brand was capturing the essence of Toronto and the people who live there; in a way that only this poetic sensibility could: 

The best way of looking at a summer sunset in this city is in the rear-view mirror. Or better, the side mirrors of a car. So startling. The subtlety, the outerworldliness of the sunset follows you. If only you could drive that way forever. It's counterintuitive, you understand, but you get a wide measure of that quotidian beauty. If you ever travel east along Dupont Street, at that time, look back. Despite this not being a particularly handsome street – in fact it is most often grim – you may see, looking back, looking west, something breathtaking. It is perhaps because this street is so ugly; car-wrecking shops, taxi dispatch sheds, rooming houses, hardware stores, desolate all-night diners and front yards eaten up by a hundred winters' salt; it is because of all this that a sunset is in the perfect location here. Needed.

As a meditation on love and relationships, and how and where we find ourselves in the world, Brand has assembled a collection of vignettes of varying degrees of wisdom – not all equally necessary or enjoyable to this reader – and I am left somewhat unsatisfied by the lack of arc and closure for the several storylines. But, in the end, a character seems to justify this scattershot approach when she notes, “There is nothing universal or timeless about this love business”. Perhaps the only universal factor is that we all seek love enough.

Finalists – 2015 Trillium Book Award

Margaret Atwood : Stone Mattress
Dionne Brand : Love Enough 
Kate Cayley : How You Were Born
James King : Old Masters
Thomas King : The Back of the Turtle
Edmund Metatawabin : Up Ghost River 

Of these, my favourite read was Up Ghost River, but congrats to Kate Cayley for the win.

Tunesday : Macho Man

Macho Man

(Morali, Jacques / Belolo, Henri / Willis, Victor / Whitehead, Peter)

Performed by The Village People

Body (body), wanna feel my body, baby (Wanna feel my body, baby)
Body, baby, such a thrill, my body (Such a thrill, my body, yeah yeah)
Body, wanna touch my body (Wanna touch my body, baby)
Body, baby, it's too much, my body (It's too much, my body, yeah yeah)
Body, check it out, my body, body (Check it out my body, baby)
Baby, don't you doubt, my body (Don't you doubt my body, yeah yeah)
Body, talking about my body, body (Talking 'bout my body, well)
Baby, checking out my body
Listen here

Every man wants to be a macho, macho man
To have the kind of body always in demand
Joggin' in the mornings, go, man, go
Workouts in the health spa, muscles grow
You can best believe me
He's a macho man
Glad he took you down with anyone you can
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

Macho, macho man (Macho man, yeah)
I gotta be a macho man (I gotta be a)
Macho, macho man, yeah
I gotta be a macho (Ow!)

Macho, macho man, yeah
I gotta be a macho man
Macho, macho man, hey hey
I gotta be a macho

Body (body), it's so hot, my body (It's so hot, my body, baby)
Body, love to pop my body (Love to pop my body, yeah yeah)
Body, love to please my body (Love to please my body, baby)
Body, don't you tease my body (Don't you tease my body, yeah)
Body, you'll adore my body (You'll adore my body, baby)
Body, come explore my body (Come explore my body, yeah yeah)
Body, made by God, my body (Made by God, my body, baby)
Body, it's so good, my body (Hey!)

You can tell a macho, he has a funky walk
His western shirts and leather, always look so boss
Funky with his body, he's a king
Call him Mister Ego, dig his chains
You can best believe that, he's a macho man
Likes to be the leader, he never dresses grand
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

Macho, macho man (Macho man, yeah)
I've got to be a macho man (I've got to be a)
Macho, macho man, yeah
I've got to be a macho
All right

Macho, macho man (Yeah, yeah)
I've got to be a macho man 
Macho, macho man 
I've got to be a macho
All right

Uh
Macho, baby

Body (body), body, body, wanna feel my body
Body, baby, body, body, come and thrill my body
Body, baby, body, body, love to funk, my body
Body, baby, body, body, it's so hot, my body

Uh
So hot, yeah, my body
All right

Every man he ought to be a macho, macho man
To live a life of freedom, machos make a stand
Have your own lifestyles and ideals
Possess the strength of confidence, that's the skill
You can best believe that he's a macho man
He's the special god son in anybody's land
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

Macho, macho man (Macho man, yeah)
I gotta be a macho man (I've got to be a)
Macho, macho man
I gotta be a macho

Macho, macho man 
I gotta be a macho man (I've got to be a)
Macho, macho man
I gotta be a macho

Macho, macho man (Dig my muscles)
I gotta be a macho man 
Macho, macho man
I gotta be a macho
Hey!

Macho, macho man
I gotta be a macho man
I gotta be a mucho mucho, macho macho man
I gotta be a macho

At the height of my private fondness for disco, I had an album by The Village People and a poster of them up on my wall (which was really saying something since I was only allowed to have one poster up at a time -- I think I took down a cute kitten poster to put up the one of these six mucho macho men). Of course I thought they were sexy guys and of course I had no idea they were gay -- I don't think I knew what gay was at the time. When I would see Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares or Charles Nelson Reilly on Match Game or even Rip Taylor on The $1.98 Beauty Show, I just thought they were Hollywood flamboyant-types.

I just honestly can't remember the first time I would have been aware of same sex relationships -- who was the first openly gay person in celebrity culture? (So, I googled that and this article isn't exhaustive, but I'm pretty sure they mean that there wasn't anyone that I would have been aware of in the late 70s.) Of course, there was Billy Crystal playing a gay character on Soap, and there was nothing at all flamboyant about him or the character -- just like the other storyline, where Billy Crystal's brother married a black woman, I didn't see anything scandalous about their situations; these were just normal people living their lives; Soap probably did more than I knew to break down bigotry in my generation.

Now, I say all this not because it would have affected my love for The Village People and their music if I had found out they were gay (this wasn't a love like my fangirl crush on Andy Gibb), but I wonder what these campy men thought of fans like me -- naive little girls in small town Canada -- who were totally oblivious to even the gay cliche of a butch-leather-biker character. I imagine their songs came across as so much fun because they were having fun -- putting on such obviously gay (yet non-flamboyant) characters, singing songs with double entendres about young men getting together at the YMCA or In The Navy -- and having the straight world sing along. And we were singing along: even my brothers would get off the couch and start marching and chanting to, "They want you, they want you, they want you as a new recruit". I'm sure my brothers had no idea that The Village People were gay either, and again, I don't mean this as a witch hunt -- I'm just fascinated by the knowledge that I had no idea, and if The Village People were playing a big game, I thoroughly enjoyed the fun of it.