Tunesday : Throwing in the Towel

 

Throwing in the Towel

(Clay, J., Levine, J., Chance, Z.) 

Soda, I'm really a mess

Every night I worry myself to sleep

While you're watching cartoons

There ain't nothing I can do for you

I know that Ponyboy's really got a damn good heart

Something 'bout him that really could take him far

But I keep holding him down

I've run this family right into the ground

Maybe you'd be best without me

I don't know what else to say

I lost our brother and I lost my way

I think a fool could'a done better

Maybe I've been afraid to say

That I'm just not cut out for this

Just another failure on a growing list

And it's harder now than ever

It's more than I can take

There ain't no one to bail me out

There ain't no saving this now

I think I'm throwing in the towel

On the days when you feel

Like you're torn in two

Making dinner, paying bills that are overdue

You think that I don't see?

It'd go to hell if it was left up to me

And I don't know what we would do

If you were not around

The one to keep the ship afloat

When it's going down

Darrel, I need you

And anyone can see that Pony does too

I know you love him

That's all you gotta do

And I don't know what else to say

I know you feel like you've lost your way

But I think you're doing better

Better than you know

If he comes back there's a price to pay

What if they lock our brother away?

There ain't no way of knowin'

We've gotta get our brother home

This is the darkest hour of the darkest night

Looking up ahead you can't see no light

But the time is now or never

There ain't no letting go

You might feel like you're givin' out

We need you more than ever now

Don't go throwing in the towel

I know your head is full of doubt

But brother, that's what love is all about

Don't go throwing in the towel

When you love someone

That's all that you can do

There ain't no throwing in the towel

The grade eight teacher at my elementary school always chose to real aloud The Outsiders to his class, and when I was in grade six, he created a musical performance out of the story for the whole school, with him reading connecting bits and his students dancing, lip-syncing, pantomiming to appropriate songs (the only song I specifically remember is Cherry singing I Don't Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar after she first meets Ponyboy). I was one of those students who tended to be volunteered for things during school hours, so I was put on loan to this production to be a spotlight operator. I stood on a stepladder with a filmstrip projector and followed the action, the most exciting scene being the chaos the spotlights brought to the big rumble. The Outsiders would have been the first novel we ever studied, and the fact that I had become intimate with the story years before I actually read the book, made it very personal to me; wrapped up with my time in elementary school and my relationships with my own brothers. Because of this, and despite having been the targeted audience when the movie was released in 1983, I never saw it — that was the first time that I just intuitively knew that the book was too precious to watch on film, or ever reread.

But when Kennedy mentioned that she was going to the stage production in Toronto, and that the run was ending this past Sunday, Dave and I decided to go as well. Soon after we were seated, an elegantly dressed older woman (she had happened to mention that she graduated high school in 1969) sat beside me and we began discussing the book at her prompting. She told me that The Outsiders is the favourite novel of a fifty-something-year-old friend — who told her she must see the musical — and I shared the fact that I had read it in school but had declined to see the movie in order not to spoil my memories. We had a lovely conversation as we waited for the curtain to rise.

The first half of the show was a little slow — maybe because it was the touring cast, or perhaps that's just the way it always is; Dave and I were a little nonplussed as we discussed it at the intermission. But it certainly picked up in the second half, and when it got to this song, with the two brothers singing about their lost brother, everything hit me in a swirl of missing my recently deceased older brother and tears started streaming down my face. I turned to Dave and said, "It got me," and his eyes were teary too. (The final song by Dallas, Little Brother, was so powerful and so visceral and so well performed that the tears then came for real.)

When the show was over, the woman beside me said, "So what did you think?" I said, "Well, it made me cry." And she said, "I know. I was going to offer you a tissue, but then I started crying, too."

Any art that touches this jaded heart is a total win in my books. Stay gold, my brother.

You might feel like you're givin' out

We need you more than ever now

Don't go throwing in the towel

I know your head is full of doubt

But brother, that's what love is all about

Don't go throwing in the towel

When you love someone

That's all that you can do

There ain't no throwing in the towel

Tunesday: We Built This City

 

We Built This City

(Songwriters: Dennis Lambert / Peter F. Wolf / Martin George Page / Bernard J.p. Taupin; performed by Starship)

We built this city

We built this city on rock and roll

Built this city

We built this city on rock and roll

Say you don't know me or recognize my face

Say you don't care who goes to that kind of place

Knee deep in the hoopla, sinking in your fight

Too many runaways eating up the night

Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember?

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

Someone's always playing corporation games

Who cares, they're always changing corporation names

We just want to dance here, someone stole the stage

They call us irresponsible, write us off the page

Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember?

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

It's just another Sunday in a tired old street

Police have got the choke hold, oh, then we just lost the beat

Who counts the money underneath the bar?

Who rides the wrecking ball into our guitars?

Don't tell us you need us 'cause we're the ship of fools

Looking for America, coming through your schools

Don't you remember? (Remember)

Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember?

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

We built, we built this city, yeah (Built this city)

We built, we built this city

We built, we built this city yeah (Built this city)

We built, we built this city

We built, we built this city yeah (Built this city)

We built, we built this city (Built this city)

I need to start by saying that I was in high school when this song came out and I never liked it (and when I later learned that Starship was the eventual bastard child of the Jefferson Airplane that once gave us the sublime White Rabbit, I was beyond understanding). But the reason for this song will eventually be made clear.

As I keep writing, my brother Ken has terminal cancer, and as one of the reasons I left my job last year was to be available for him in any way he might need my support, when  Ken told me he wanted to take a trip to Newfoundland (the only Canadian province he had yet to visit) and that I was welcome to join him, I told him I'd go with him. His goals were to 1) Get "screeched in", 2) Visit Cape Spear, Signal Hill, Dildo, and The Rooms museum, and 3) Go Whale Watching. And we did them all (to varying degrees of success).

We flew out on a morning flght, and as we arrived in St. John's a couple hours before our Vrbo was available for check in, I suggested we take the turn out to Cape Spear (the most easterly point in North America) to waste some time. When we got to the parking lot, there was a path that split in two directions: right up to the lighthouse, and left to who knows where. Ken picked the  lighthouse path, and it was a strenuous climb for him, with a couple of stops, and as it was quite foggy, the view didn't have much of a payoff.

Ken was so worn out by this point that when we saw another path heading down into the fog, he said he'd wait for me to go down and check it out. I jogged down the stony path and arrived at a battery (long cannons set up defensively for WWI and then a garrison used during WWII)  and found myself at a marker for the most easterly point (where a woman offered to take my picture because she not-so-secretly wanted me to take her photo for her, lol.).

Leaving that marker, I nearly immediately found myself back at the parking lot, jogged back up to where Ken was still waiting, and explained to him that it would be all downhill (and then a gentle rise back to the parking lot) if he wanted to come see that marker stone. At first he said no (and I still have no idea how much energy he actually has; no clue whether to push him), but then he agreed to come check out what I saw (and I'm sure he's glad he did; this was on his wishlist, even if it was fogged in.)

We got a few groceries and then it was time to get into the Vrbo: a quirky little place just a couple blocks uphill from the bars and pubs of George Street. We eventually made our way down there and went into Christian's Pub  (where Ken's research had told him would be the best place to be screeched in) and asked about the ceremony: they put us on the list and told us to be back within an hour because they lock the doors at 7, and we still hadn't eaten any supper. Got fish and chips next door and made it back in time; a table with a lone man and woman invited us to join them and we learned that they were in from Cape Breton, in town for for the East Coast Music Awards, and that she (another Krista) considers herself a guerilla artist because she carries a craft kit of googly eyes on her at all times, looking for posters and statues to deface enhance, and that at this year's awards, there were even posters around featuring her previous work. (Honestly: amazingly friendly and engaging couple who set the tone for an amazing evening.) The ceremony lasts a couple of hours, and we drank the screech (which for some reason I always though was a moonshine, but it's a lovely, warming spiced rum), and we kissed the cod (frozen in this case, but still a little nasty to put your mouth on after others have.)

(That is the other Krista smiling and taking a picture of me, and in the picture I led with up top, that's  our host "Aunt Luce"; bizarrely, yet another Krista.) The next day we drove up to Dildo: Ken wanted a picture with their (apparently) famous city sign, but it has recently been changed out for something wordy (and less tempting to steal, apparently.) We were not disappointed, however, to discover the Nan and Pop Dildo Souvenir Shop ("Something for Everyone!")

Or to realise, after taking a few pictures down by the wharf, that there's a Hollywood-type Dildo sign up on the hillside (and when we later had lunch at the Dildo Brewing Co, which has a Jimmy Kimmel for Mayor of Dildo sign on the wall, I had to ask Ken if he thought Kimmel installed that sign.)

The next day we went to Signal Hill and attempted to get a picture beside the Cabot Tower (erected in 1898 - already old in terms of Canadian sites - to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Cabot's landing in Newfoundland}, and it was so incredibly windy that Ken was honestly afraid that he'd be knocked down:

And even I had to fight my way, stumbling,  across the clifftop to take this picture of St John's harbour:

We headed back into the city and went to The Rooms (part museum, part art gallery; totally worth seeing as an insight into Newfoundland history and culture), and after a brief break (it is the hockey playoffs!), we went back to Signal Hill (because the wind had died down and it was safe for both me and Ken to walk around the clifftop):

 And because Ken said that he wanted to eat moose while he was in Newfoundland (which he later said was just a joke), I suggested we go to the only place I could find online that was serving it, The Guv'nor Inn and Pub. And, like everywhere else (even the hotdog cart outside of Christian's), they informed us that moose was out of stock at the moment (which Ken didn't seem to mind), but I was able to order a mess of cod tongues (like my Mum made when we were growing up; Ken said the fish and chips he ordered was probably the best he ever had).

Because we were at the most easterly point in North America, I decided to leave the next morning before 5 am for a panoramic sunrise photo (Ken was not interested in joining me, and you need to respect the needs of someone whose sleep schedule is hijacked by cancer):

We went "whale watching" in Bay Bulls later that day (it's not quite the season for whales yet, and while they do guarantee puffin sightings, the puffins aren't nesting yet, so you can only see them at a distance flying away from the approaching boat across the water; which, while interesting to the eye, was not photographable with my phone), but a boat ride in this rugged landscape is a lovely experience no matter what you're looking at (and Obrien's Boat Tours - with folk singers and screeching in - puts on an entertaining show).

In the end, we did everything on Ken's list, and as for this song choice: Signal Hill is the site from which Marconi played his mamba across the waves to Ireland in the world's first Trans-Atlantic radio broadcast (or, er, received a banal radio transmission), and as Newfoundland is known colloquially as "The Rock", something about "we built this city on rock and roll" just seemed to fit the vibe of St. John's. Overall: The people were amazingly friendly (a talkative and colourful stranger on the street offered to pray for Ken once informed of why his voice is so husky) and the landscape is as beautiful and rugged as promised. I believe Ken got out of this trip what he wanted, and I was happy to go with him. Here's hoping he's up for the Mediterranean cruise in September we're all going on together!

Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember?

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll

The House of Doors

 

My body felt very light, almost weightless, as I turned towards him. In the silence we looked at each other, each waiting for the other to speak, to move.

“The House of Doors,” I said softly.

I haven’t read Tan Twan Eng before, so I can’t really say if The House of Doors is typical of his work, but honestly, I just found it dull. Combining a few real life historical events — an in-its-day shocking murder trial, the in-exile revolutionary efforts of China’s Sun Yat Sen, Somerset Maugham’s world travels in search of subject matter for his next bestseller — and overlaying each strand with melodramatic love stories, I wasn’t moved or entertained by any of it. I can see that others really loved this, and it has caught the attention of literary juries, so I have no problem admitting that my experience was not typical. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Below my wedding portrait hangs a photograph of two women, their blouses and frocks and hats quaintly old-fashioned, from another age: Ethel and me, each with a rifle in our hands, the mock-Tudor façade of the Spotted Dog in Kuala Lumpur looming behind us.The photograph had been taken after a shooting competition on the padang. Poor, poor Ethel. My eyes glide to the photograph next to it. I unhook it and study it in the light of the windows. Looking at the four of us – Willie Maugham and Gerald and Robert and myself – lounging in our rattan chairs under the casuarina tree in the garden, my mind loops back to the two weeks in 1921 when the writer and his secretary had stayed with us at Cassowary House. I put down the photograph. The morning is decanting its light down the slopes of the far mountains. It is the autumn equinox today; here, in the southern bowl of the earth, the portions of day and night are exactly equal. The world is at an equilibrium, but I myself feel unsteady, off-balance.

As the novel opens with a prologue set in 1947, one of our two narrators, Lesley Doornfontein, is living in South Africa and has received a first edition copy of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Casuarina Tree. This mysteriously inscribed collection of stories sends her mind back to 1921, when she and her husband were living in the Malaysian state of Penang and had played host to “Willie” Maugham and his secretary/companion Gerald Haxton. Maugham himself is the second narrator, and between what he shares about the economic and domestic pressures he was under at the time, and the story that Lesley tells him about her role in the infamous Ethel Proudlock Case, we get to watch as the desperate author mines the lives of others for his fiction (in this case, turning the story his hostess tells him into the short story The Letter). While Lesley willingly unburdens herself of the secrets she had been keeping for her one-time friend, Maugham also probes her for details of the affair Lesley herself had been having at the time; and when it comes out that just about everyone has affairs and secret lovers, it is concluded more than once that “Every marriage has its own rules.”

From the beginning, I found the writing a little overblown, and I wondered if Tan was trying to emulate Maugham’s own old-fashioned vernacular. When Maugham first meets with his old friend Robert (Lesley’s husband), he notes to himself, “The thick head of hair Robert once possessed was gone, the dome of his head now a depilated basilica, with just a narrow fringe of sparse grey hair above his ears. He hadn’t recognised his old friend’s voice either — the resplendent baritone he used to envy had shrivelled to a querulous, fissured tone.” And when Maugham meets Lesley herself, he thinks, “The corners of her mouth were slightly curled, pulled downwards by another tangle of lines, giving them an anatine look.” And I did not believe that these were in-the-moment impressions, even from a last century author. Or that non-author Lesley would have the following thoughts while skinny-dipping with Maugham in a sea of efflorescent plankton:

Like an anchor sliding from a ship, I sank beneath the surface of the sea and cleaved my way down, descending in a cocoon of light. Shadowy fishes darted around me. The water grew colder, but still I kept falling, intoxicated by the sensation that I was travelling back in time. Was it because the sea was so unmeasurably old, existing even before the firmaments had been formed to divide the waters from the waters? I was gripped by an atavistic urge to keep sinking, down and ever down into the impenetrable darkness, boring a narrow tunnel of light into the fathomless sea, nebulae burning from my fingertips, comet-fire trailing in my wake. What would happen if kept falling, all the way to the beginning of time?

Nothing about the various love stories engaged me, Lesley educating herself on Chinese history after meeting the revolutionary Sun Yat Sen felt like info-dumping, and even her story of the notorious murder trial of her “friend” Ethel Proudlock was doled out so slowly and matter-of-factly that it lacked the expected narrative tension of a courtroom drama (reading The Letter was a much more satisfying experience and there is something interesting in seeing how Tan imagined Maugham turned the one into the other).

We sat there in the silence, our true thoughts camouflaged from each other. What sustained a marriage, kept it going year upon year, I realised, were the things we left unmentioned, the truths that we longed to speak forced back down our throats, back into the deepest, darkest chambers of our hearts.

From Lesley and Robert’s marriage to Maugham’s relationship with Gerald to Sun Yat Sen’s polygamous partners and Ethel Proudlock’s scandal, this idea of lies and secrets sustaining every marriage seems to be the main point of The House of Doors, and that wasn’t an engaging enough thesis to keep my interest. This just wasn’t for me.

Booker Prize Longlist 2023

A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’

Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein * My favourite of the list

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escofferey

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Pearl by Siân Hughes

All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Rage the Night

“I c-curse—I c-curse them greedy bastards,” he grits out. “I—I—” and with the curse still on his lips he slumps, his head rolling onto Roan’s shoulder. A horrid sound wrenches from Mose and a terrible pain fists itself from Roan’s belly up through his chest. He catches himself on a sob and is startled like a child who’s known only the pain of the flesh. He drops his forehead against that wildly thatched brow and his mouth trembles.

I’ve read and delighted in Donna Morrissey before, but still, I was happily surprised by how entranced I was by Rage the Night. Set a century ago across the Northern breadth of Newfoundland, and blending domestic drama and real-life historic tragedy, Morrissey delivers a heart-pounding, riveting tale of identity, survival, and finding one’s tribe. Centred on a decent young man who leaves behind everything’s he’s known — travelling through frigid snows by dog sled, decrepit sealing ship, and finally, by frozen foot — I couldn’t help but become incredibly invested in this one character’s survival (which was a neat literary trick to make me care about the [mostly faceless] scores of men involved in the historical event.) If I had a complaint: This character’s domestic mystery (the impetus for his journey) is pretty convoluted and drawn out and I was often unsure what was happening or if I had missed something along the way. Taking off half a star for that, but happily rounding up to five. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

He is struck with the desire to beat the remaining snow from this cold grave, to shovel down through the earth until he reaches Frances Elizabeth and the little nest of bones upon her skeletal breast. Then all would be still, the spirits pummelled back into their graves and he restored to what he was before the old nurse spun out her confession.

Roan — raised in an orphanage on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula, but as a favourite of the local doctor, educated at a fine Boston boarding school — has learned, at twenty years old, details of his birth that send him immediately in search of some rumoured family in the colony’s faraway capital of St. John’s. Roan is an intelligent, damaged, big-hearted character, and as he makes his way through the long snowy stretches by dogsled, the people that he meets and helps along the way prove that he would make a good minister or doctor with further education, as his mentor back home had hoped. When he finally arrives in St John’s, Roan sees the men he’s searching for scrambling to make their berths on the sealing ship The Newfoundland, and although he has not done this work before, he’s able to secure his own berth and follows along, standing out awkwardly from his shipmates with his polished speech and well-made clothing. As Roan slowly becomes accepted by the men below-decks (a camaraderie he never knew as a backwoods orphan outcast at boarding school), and as he forces a few awkward conversations with the man he believes to hold the key to his origins, the real-life tragedy of The Newfoundland plays out: a heart-pounding tale of survival and brotherhood in the face of greedy Captains and cold-hearted nature. Between the relatable characters and the evocative nature writing, Morrissey has crafted a compelling story that critiques social imbalances that hold true today.

Uncle Jack sings, his voice starting to hoarsen, sounding rougher than an anchor dragging the ocean floor. “Abiiide with meee, ooooh, abiiiide with me.” The men sing with him: they sing to keep themselves going, they sing to banish the cries of the dying, they sing to banish their own fear of dying, they sing to banish the night and banish thoughts of their weakening legs and frozen fingers and hungry bellies, and their songs are their tears and their voices are as one and it is louder than the winds.

The best part of Rage the Night is witnessing the decent, yearning Roan find his tribe among the motley sealing crew (so many wonderful scenes with the distinctive, humorous Newfoundland accent and patter), and when the crew finds themselves in a harrowing survival situation, watching as they fight for one another; closer than any family. As I wrote above, the unravelling mystery of Roan’s origins was a bit too convoluted for my tastes, but I do appreciate how Morrissey used this as the catalyst, backstory, and plot propellor: it certainly did humanise the historic tragedy to follow along with this outsider as he learned the economic pressures that would send poor men to sea in such a dangerous industry. This book has so much heart — and simply incredible nature writing — and is exactly to my tastes. 

Tunesday : Walk Like an Egyptian

 

Walk Like an Egyptian

(Liam Hillard Sternberg) Performed by The Bangles

All the old paintings on the tombs

They do the sand dance don't you know?

If they move too quick (oh whey oh)

They're falling down like a domino

All the bazaar men by the Nile

They got the money on a bet

Gold crocodiles (oh whey oh)

They snap their teeth on your cigarette

Foreign types with the hookah pipes say

(Whey oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh)

Walk like an Egyptian

The blonde waitresses take their trays

They spin around and they cross the floor

They've got the moves (oh whey oh)

You drop your drink, then they bring you more

All the school kids so sick of books

They like the punk and the metal band

When the buzzer rings (oh whey oh)

They're walking like an Egyptian

All the kids in the marketplace say

(Whey oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh)

Walk like an Egyptian

Slide your feet up the street, bend your back

Shift your arm then you pull it back

Life is hard you know (oh whey oh)

So strike a pose on a Cadillac

If you wanna find all the cops

They're hanging out in the donut shop

They sing and dance (oh whey oh)

They spin the clubs, cruise down the block

 All the Japanese with their yen

The party boys call the Kremlin

And the Chinese know (oh whey oh)

They walk the line like Egyptian

All the cops in the donut shop say

(Whey oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh)

Walk like an Egyptian

Walk like an Egyptian

To begin: I don't even remember the last time I did a "Tunesday" post, and while I can't even be bothered to look up when it might have been, my sense is that the last one that would have really mattered to me would have been from three years ago when Dave and I went on our last big adventure. But then COVID shut down the world and Dave's parents were sick (and then gone)  and we bought the Lakehouse and Kennedy had her backyard wedding and we helped Mallory get into the housing market and it seemed we would never go away again...but we did! After Christmas last year, Dave and I decided that in 2023 we would travel again and we landed on a definite bucket list destination: Egypt, in all its ancient and modern majesty. We booked a tour that seemed to hit all the highlights: Cairo and the Giza Plateau, a cruise up the Nile River to the Valley of the Kings, and at the end, three days at an all-inclusive resort on the Red Sea. And I have to say: it was a wonderful trip that filled me, heart and soul. (And also reawakened my greed for these kinds of experiences: What's next? When can we go? Anywhere, anywhen with this guy.)

Here's a story I need to get out of the way: When we got to Cairo (after something like twelve hours of travel), we learned that Air Canada had failed to put our luggage on the flight; it was still on the ground in Toronto. And while our tour coordinator and a representative from the Cairo airport assured us that this happens all the time and that they would find a way to get our bags to us, Dave was super frustrated and insisted on calling Air Canada as soon as we were seated on the shuttle bus to the hotel (which was super embarassing for me, increasingly more  frustrating for Dave - as the rep spoke imperfect English and he felt the need to keep raising his voice and repeating everything - and it must have made a bad impression to everyone else on the bus, who had all just been forced to wait an extra hour with us as we watched for the bags that never came and filled out our paper work). With only our carry-on luggage, we needed to go shopping for clothes a few times (not a nice experience; we paid too much for poor quality knock-off "designer", but there really weren't any alternatives) and it took us several days to find sunscreen and hair product (this picture at the pyramids above shows us in our not-quite-right clothes; note I couldn't even get a hat for the sun). But, the bags did eventually come (the last evening of our river cruise), and if nothing else, we tried to act like good sports about it and the situation served as a good icebreaker with the rest of the tour group. All part of the adventure. But insult to injury: Air Canada delayed our bags on the way home, too; they never made the connection with us in Athens. (I mean realllly, lol.) But, before we even knew our bags were lost, this was the amazing view as we came in to land in Cairo:

So, day one: We got to the hotel in the early afternoon (the Ramses Hilton; it was fine - they may call it a five star, but it was just okay; the elevators that did work were terrifying), and our tour guide, Isis, told us we could find clothes at the Ramses Mall across the street if we wanted to join those in the group who were planning to go out to dinner together. Naturally, we went over, and it was floor after floor of the same knockoff designer purse and shoe stores, lots of pyjama stores for some reason, a "Cottonli" (really affordable socks and underwear made of soft Egyptian cotton), a dollar store (where I found an eyeliner, mascara, and deodorant) and, finally, one store that sold familiarish tops and bottoms, where we bought a few things (hoping our bags would catch up with us before we left Cairo), and it wasn't until we got home that we saw how they had overcharged us (I think that first shopping trip was $350 for 6 items? We went back a couple days later and bought a few more things - including a top that literally disintegrated in my hands as I pulled it over my head - but that time they hailed us as good customers that had earned a discount and we paid the equivalent of $150 dollars: I'd say never pay on a mobile credit card machine where you can't read the payment screen - we needed clothes and had no other choice but to shop in this one store, but I suppose we could have went to an ATM to get cash and control the cost. Live and learn.) 

At any rate, we were able to join the group for dinner at the Sky Rim restaurant - on a mountain overlooking the city as the sun set - and the "typical Egyptian meal" (hummus and baba ganoush, roast chicken and fish) was tasty and familiar. Sitting and really talking with the other folks on the tour for the first time (somehow, our end of the table were all Canadians) made for a friendly and satisfying evening. A crazy start to the day ended perfectly.

(Not to belabour the complaint, but I'm wearing a dress here from the Ramses Mall that was fine, but the bottom was so sheer that I had to wear my yoga pants from the plane under it.)

The next day was the first proper day of the tour. We started at the Great Pyramids (!!) and had the opportunity to enter the Pyramid of Khafre:

The tunnel feels just as small as that looks: I was bent over at the waist, with knees slightly crouched, the entire way down (thank goodness there is a wooden walkway with rungs along it for traction), and as claustrophobic as that may seem, I hadn't realised until the first time it happened that people exiting would be coming back up the same ramp. As we kept going down and down, with electric lights every here and there barely showing the way, I began to wonder just how long the tunnel was - and I also became very aware of just how vulnerable we were: if anyone started freaking out and scrambling past the long line of us for the exit, it would surely start a stampede and people would be hurt (but I was reassured by the fact that I had never heard of that happening). As it turns out, it took about twenty minutes to get to the "burial chamber" (compared to the hour+ it takes at the Khufu Pyramid [which is the one tourists usually get to enter, but which was closed to us; thank Ra]) and that was just enough time to feel like we had "earned" it. Standing upright in the open chamber (which isn't decorated beyond graffiti from the nineteenth century and a sarcophagus of dubious provenance), I was in awe of the millions of tons of quarried rock above and around me; in awe of the human effort behind its flawless construction and the thousands of years that it has stood and the fact that my own breath was now adding itself to that ancient story. The tour guide, Isis, had explained that entering the pyramid (for an extra charge) wouldn't be visually stunning - and that it certainly wouldn't be for anyone even slightly claustrophobic - but when people ask me what my favourite part of the trip was, this was it: more than anywhere else we went in Egypt, this was where I felt most in communion with that country's long and storied history.

I also want to note: It was at the pyramids that I first encountered what an aggressive tipping ("baksheesh") culture Egypt is. In the burial chamber there was an official-looking man who waved people to move behind the ropes and pose on the sarcophagus, with his hand out at the end for a fee. When we were back topside and taking selfies in front of the pyramids, another man (who looked like an official) told us not to stand in a certain place (and being polite and law-abiding, we moved to where he suggested), and before we knew it, he had Dave's phone in his hand and he was telling us how to pose and moving us to another vantage, and then another man was opening Egyptian headdresses and putting them on our heads and then they were telling us how much we owed for them. I can't explain how fast that all happened, and how it soured me. And this would happen everywhere we went - one of the friends we made in the group, Raul, even had a policeman hustle him this way (and as Raul explained: when a machine-gun-toting man in uniform separates you from your group and then puts out his hand, you put money in it) - and it took me nearly the whole trip to come to terms with the fact that this is just the culture: I was not being singled out for harassment and we should have had a stack of American dollar bills to give to anyone who felt like doing us a favour. Still, aesthetically, I do prefer our selfies:

After our experience in front of (and inside!) the pyramids, we were brought on the bus to a panoramic point up and behind the plateau. This is where some in our group decided to ride camels out to the "perfect" picture site, but since Dave and I have had a (better) camel experience in Jordan, we took the free time to enjoy the view on our own, and ended up walking back down to the pyramids anyway (and I am delighted to share the pro tip that there was no one at the back: we had the landscape entirely to ourselves to explore and take our selfies).

And then we saw the Sphinx (and Dave had no idea what I was asking him to do with the perspective here; this lame photo is as close as we got, lol):

And then we finished the day with a trip to the Egyptian Museum. And as amazing as it was to see the mummies and the artefacts and the golden treasures of King Tut's tomb, my absolutely favourite experience was seeing the room devoted to my favourite ancient weirdo, the Pharaoh Akhenaten:

The next day we flew to Aswan and took a trip to the Aswan High Dam (I have to say: I understand how important and technically challenging the construction of this dam was for controlling the annual flood of the Nile, but having seen the Hoover Dam, this didn't feel like it earned the name "high dam"). We saw an unfinished obelisk in a nearby quarry (my word, but it was hot out: in the forties and we still had no hats), we took a wind-powered felucca boat on a spin around the Nile as its crew sang for us (hands out at the end), and we boarded our river cruise boat, the Alyssa. We went clothes shopping again in Aswan - and we were just so lucky that when we went to cross the street out front of the dock and an aggressive hustler tried to get us to follow him to a "spice market", we slipped into a door that turned out to be the entrance to a multistory department store (women's clothes on the main floor, kids' on the second, men's on the third), and not only were we able to find suitable clothes at a reasonable price, but they directed us to a nearby pharmacy, where we were finally able to get sunscreen, razors, toothpaste, and hair gel. Everything about the river cruise was wonderful: our room was lovely, the staff was friendly, and with big buffets at every meal, it was easy to find something good to eat with very little effort. There was a pool on the top deck of the boat, but while Dave was able to buy himself a swimsuit at the department store, the only options they had for women covered from the ankle to the wrist; maybe for others, not for me.

That first day in Aswan we also had a tour of the Island of Philae - a temple complex that had needed to be moved to an island with higher elevation after the damming of the Nile raised the water level - and we had a fascinating tour guide for this excursion whose story tied in nicely with what we experienced during our tour of Abu Simbel the next morning (another, huge, temple complex that had had to be moved to higher ground when the Nile was dammed). I'm just going to share what I wrote about ancient "graffiti" on facebook because this is the kind of historical insight that fires my brain:

A word on graffiti: Yes, there are idiots who sharpie on the temple walls, and it seems that every 19th century archeologist carved his name in between hieroglyphs, but I was most fascinated by the graffiti at the Philae temple we visited yesterday. Here are pictures of the entrance (with the goddess Isis having been defaced by the early Christians because they didn't like her virgin birth story; the empty plinth on the left is where the obelisk in Trafalgar Square is from). And I'm sharing a picture of a statement (top right) left behind by Napoleon's army. And the last is a picture of graffiti from antiquity to which our guide had a personal connection: almost finished his Masters in Ancient Egyptian languages in London back in the 80s, his advisor told him that a couple of Canadian archeologists had apparently discovered the last ever use of demotic Egyptian in antiquity, and told him that his Masters thesis would be improved if he could find it and translate it. The Canadians were long gone by the time he got there, and it took him nine months and a bunch of good luck to find the tiny carving amongst all the hieroglyphics and cartouches. And when he translated it, he discovered that it had been written by a Greek (from the time of Alexander the Great) and it translates as: I am Peter junior, son of the son of Peter. I was FASCINATED by that - this is recording the death of a written language, and it's "Kilroy was here" - and I felt really lucky to have had this guide on this day; I don't know if anyone else tells that particular story. Naturally, you hate to see the modern graffiti, and it's sad to see how the Church tried to erase the parts they didn't like, but in the end, it's all a part of the human history of these sites.

Also note: Taking the "optional" tour of Abu Simbel meant meeting in the lobby at 2:30 am for a four hour bus ride (the temple is way down south, 20km from the Sudan border, and we were held up for an extra hour at a military checkpoint). I'm not good at sleeping in moving vehicles - and no one who could see how the bus driver played chicken with oncoming traffic was able to relax anyway - but this was an incredible experience and I am happy to have taken advantage of it. People who didn't go on this tour had the option of visiting a Nubian village (seeing the crocodiles they keep in their houses, experiencing their hospitality, and taking a dip in the Nile), and while I wish there had been time to do absolutely everything, I have no regrets. After returning to Aswan, we joined the rest of the group in travelling onward to Kom Ombo, where we saw the "twin temples" of Haroeris and Sobek.

The next morning we docked and met in the lobby at 5:30, and although our itinerary said that we'd be taking horse-drawn carriages to the Temple of Edfu, everyone was relieved to discover that we were to go by bus. When you see the horses - not only their ribs but their hipbones were painfully visible - it's hard to understand why tourists would be lined up to use them (but to be fair: if our tour company was still using the horses, it would have been hard to refuse to get into the carriage. If more tour companies stop using them, maybe the industry will be put out of business; but, of course, that comes with its own downside for the carriage operators. It's hard to know what to wish for, but participating in what looks like animal abuse isn't for me.) Back on board the riverboat and we spent the day sailing up to Luxor - we had a sun shelter on deck and I read in the shade while Dave swam in the pool - and it was fascinating to watch hawkers row out to our much bigger ships to try and sell goods as we waited our turn to go through a lock. They'd try every language (as they do on dry land) until someone answered them, and then they'd put a Tshirt or a tablecloth or some such in a plastic bag and throw it up on deck. If someone decided to buy it, they'd put money in the bag and throw it back down, or just throw the goods back (or, as someone in our group apparently did, refuse to touch the bag of goods as it lay on the deck beside her.)

When we got to Luxor, our lost bags were brought on board! And although Isis told us to leave them in the lobby and someone would bring them to our room eventually, we took them immediately to our room and changed into our own clothes before we left again. Off to see the Temples of Luxor and Karnak, back to the ship for dinner (and to finally pose with my copy of Death on the Nile while we still had daylight on the Nile) and then back to Karnak for a sound and light show. Now, not only was it still hot out when we got to the temple complex at 9 pm (it had been so hot all day), and not only had I been disappointed that the sound and light show we had prepaid for had been moved from Cairo and the Pyramids to Karnak by the tour company, but the show itself...was kind of boring. More sound - droning, dramatic storytelling - than light. We spent half the time walking through with a sea of lit-up-phone-recording people as various obelisks and panels of writing were illuminated one by one and half the time sitting beside the Sacred Lake - but the water itself wasn't used for reflections and there wasn't, like, a laser show or fireworks or anything (and maybe it's like: good for them for respecting the space and not going for big Hollywood/Disneyworld effects, but it was a little long and dull?)

The next morning we went back into Luxor, but this time to the West Bank and the Valley of the Kings. (Note: There was an optional excursion to have a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings, and while I know that I wouldn't like the heights and the instability, those who went - leaving the hotel at 3 am - said it was a "commercial balloon" that holds up to 35 people; "as stable as an elevator"; looking over the side is "like looking out an airplane window". I don't know. It still scares me; no regrets.) It's amazing to travel through this area - a barren desert with looming sandstone cliffs, dotted here and there with tomb entrances - and I could just imagine the people who for millennia had walked over the graves of their long-dead pharaohs without any clue of what was beneath their feet. Or imagine the early Egyptologists, randomly poking around for a tomb entrance, sometimes getting lucky; none so lucky as the fabled Howard Carter. As tourists, we were given a ticket that entitled us entrance to any three tombs, and Isis directed us to what she said were the three biggest and most brightly decorated (if I remember it right, it was Ramses III, Ramses IV, and Setnakht, and they were phenomenal). Entrance to King Tut's tomb is an extra $20 US, and even though Dave had read on the internet beforehand that it's not worth the price, I wasn't going to come that far and not see everything possible. Yes, what you can see of Tutankhamun's tomb amounts to just two small rooms - one with his mummy in a climate-controlled glass case and one with a stone sarcophagus; all of the treasures are in the Egyptian Museum - but I was amazed to have experienced this (even taking out Death Comes As the End for a picture). Just look at these happy faces:

We then went on to the Temple of Hatshepsut, and I have to say: It is huge and imposing and amazing, but after so many huge and imposing and amazing sites, it all became a bit too much; I was suffering a temple hangover, and by this point, I think I was exhausted and overwhelmed by the scale of it all. We stayed that night at the Steigenberger Resort Achti (pretty "swish" as our new Scottish friends proclaimed), and while it was the last evening we were to have with many of our new friends, we were certainly looking forward to the next phase of the tour: three nights at the Amarina Abu Soma Resort outside of Hurghada on the Red Sea. Although there had been a fatal shark attack in Hurghada just the week before, as well as a deadly boat fire, there was a shark net (patrolled constantly by a life guard) at the resort and we did end up going in the water. As an all inclusive, the food and the drink, the sun and the sand, the buffets and a la carte restaurants, were exactly what we needed to recover from a week of early starts, late nights talking with new friends, and cramming our senses with overwhelming experiences. Several others from the main tour group joined us at the resort - we especially enjoyed the time with our Scottish friends - and three days was just enough time to recover. Dave never did get the waters to part for him, however:

A downside: When we split with the main group at Luxor, they flew back to Cairo, enjoyed a last day and night in the city and then flew out the next morning. Our last day was spent (over nine hours !!) on a too small bus, driving back to Cairo. And when we got there, Dave and I were whisked off on the Old City tour that I had prepaid for (we didn't know we would be the only ones; the rest of our group was taken to the Old Cairo Bazaar, which the itinerary had us visiting on day one). And while our guide was friendly and knowledgeable and gave us an amazing condensed history of the city and the country as he showed us the Saladin Citadel, the Alabaster Mosque, and the Church of Abu Serga (built over the cave where the Holy Family lived while escaping Herod's slaughter of the innocents; this felt like it closed the circle of visiting Bethlehem on our last trip), it was hot and we were tired and stiff from the long bus ride. At the end, he said he was supposed to take us next to the bazaar (it had been part of what we were expecting), but we told him we would be happy to go on to the airport hotel instead.

We checked into Le Meridien, also quite "swish", had a refreshing rest in the lobby bar, and met up with our Scottish friends for one last dinner. Woke up the next morning and started the journey home. Sidenote: I wish I had really looked at the itinerary, and seeing that we were changing planes in Athens, I wish I had looked into making it a long enough layover to see the Acropolis. Not only would I like to see the Acropolis, but the connection was so tight that an Air Canada agent met us at the staircase down to the bus that would take us to the terminal, she rode us to the terminal and passed us off to another agent who said, "Can you run?" And then we ran for like ten minutes through the terminal - including up two flights of stairs - with our carry-ons. He brought us through a private security area, unlocked a back door to the gate area, and got us there just as our flight was boarding. We kind of knew at that point that our bags wouldn't be making the connection with us, but going home, there wasn't much at stake and we knew it would be just another data point to take to Air Canada.

And if anything here sounds like complaining, it's truly not. This was a trip of a lifetime, in a lifetime of amazing trips, and I feel grateful and enlarged and just so lucky to have been able to see and touch and breathe the air of this amazing country. Fun facts: the pyramids and the Sphinx are maybe not as big in real life as I had expected; the pyramids aren't built on a sandy desert but on top of a wobbly limestone surface (which is like, duh, that's why they haven't sunken down, but it never crossed my mind before I felt it under my feet); and while at first I bristled at the baksheesh culture, I grew to understand it as a way of getting by. There are so many things that are a part of me now that I didn't get from books or shows and I could cry to think of how I have been so soul-nourished with this knowledge. I had no idea that pharaonic mummies had these weirdly carved gold finger and toe covers before I saw them in the Egyptian Museum. How had I never seen these before?

This is long enough for today: I will need to come make another post about the people that we met; what an incredible group, from all over, that made us smile every day. I simply feel blessed.