Mind Picking : Happy Halloween IV

In February, Dave and I were at his work-related off-site (he and his coworkers went to meetings and we spouses enjoyed relaxing at the beautiful inn in the heart of Ontario Wine Country), and when the meetings were done, people started to talk about what they'd like to do with their free time. Someone mentioned wine-tasting, and someone mentioned a hike, and then someone else mentioned exploring the ghost town at Ball's Falls. Dave and I exchanged glances and said, “We're in.”

When we got to the Conservation Area, however, we were disappointed to realise that “ghost town” in this case simply meant “abandoned townsite”, and even so far as that's concerned, there are just a few preserved buildings – a home, a barn, a grist mill, a church – that were locked against our entry. It was cold and slushy and it took about an hour to walk the entire area from the lower falls (and the townsite) to the upper falls (where there's a small ruin from a former mill) and back to the interpretive centre, and while it was a very picturesque hike, it wasn't particularly spooky. What we didn't know until later is that there apparently is a ghost story attached to Ball's Falls. 

As the story goes, at the turn of the nineteenth century, a local couple was planning their upcoming marriage when the young man was called upon to fight in the War of 1812. When word soon reached his fiance that he had been killed in the bloody conflict, she put on her wedding gown, climbed the winding pathway to the top of the waterfall, and hurled herself over the top. The story varies between whether she committed suicide at the upper falls (which are 35 feet high) or the lower falls (which are 90 feet high), but either way, the pools at the bottom of each are more rock than water and she would have met a violent and grisly end. Her ghost is said to now haunt the area, and when conditions are right, people report that a luminous lady in white can be seen walking the winding, rocky paths. 

Because we didn't know this story, Dave explained to his coworker Tony that the "ghost town" at Ball's Falls was a disappointment to us because he and I have a history of going on haunted walks. What is extraordinary is that I hadn't really thought of that as something we do. But we do.

For our Honeymoon, Dave and I drove down through the States, intending to split our time between New Orleans and Memphis. This was meant to be a fly-by-the-pants, no strict plans type trip, so when we got to New Orleans and Dave asked what I wanted to do there, I flipped through a brochure in the hotel room and stopped at the perfect ad: The Haunts of New Orleans Tour; and we booked it. At the appointed hour, a limo pulled up to our hotel, and other than the wizened old woman who was to serve as our guide, there were no other occupants. Perfect. We drove around the city, pulling up in front of the "most haunted" buildings and homes and cemeteries, and we ended the tour at Madame Laveau's House of Voodoo (where I bought myself a voodoo doll). Marie Laveau was probably the most interesting character we learned about: a beautiful woman of mixed race, Laveau married a white man when she was only 18, but within a few years, he was dead and she became known as the Widow Paris. Supporting herself as a hairdresser after that, Laveau was able to collect gossip and insider intrigue from her more connected clients, and as a result, she was able to make pronouncements that seemed otherworldly. Laveau nurtured this belief, and by the time she died, most people in New Orleans believed she was a powerful voodoo witch. It was her daughter from a second marriage however, known as Marie II, who really ran with the idea; leading voodoo ceremonies in the swamps and attracting the attention of every white man who was grasping after power. Marie II died in mysterious circumstances (thought to have drowned in Lake Pontchartrain), and even today, no one can say for sure which cemetery holds the remains of either of the Maries. And yet...the Saint Louis Cemetery #1 has a tomb where modern voodoo practitioners go to make offerings to their former queen, and legend has it that her ghost can often be seen hanging around the crypt, and more reliably, rising to attend the St. John's Eve ceremonies every June 23rd, holding court over the spectacular voodoo ceremonies held on Bayou St every year. One thing for sure: the palpable age of the city of New Orleans makes one believe that its history and people could certainly live on. 

(Stupid that we took so many pics on this tour but none with us in them)

In 1998, Dave and his Dad went to LA to attend a sci-fi convention, and as they are both movie nerds, they went on the Hollywood Gravelines Tour. For their experience, a converted hearse arrived at their hotel and they were driven around to sites of various famous deaths (John Belushi's condo, the nightclub out front of which River Phoenix OD'd). They reported nothing spooky happening, but I include this story to reinforce the point that this is something we do.

Another year on our anniversary, we were staying overnight in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and although at the time I wouldn't have consciously thought of this as "something we do", we made arrangements to go on a haunted walking tour. When we arrived at the meeting place past dark, everyone in the group was given candlelit lanterns to carry, and despite being a city with working streetlights, we were often glad for the added light (and I can't deny it made for a great atmosphere). As an historical fishing port, we were told many stories about ghosts trying to make their way home after being lost at sea, we toured the impressive St. John’s Anglican Church, we noted the widow's walks at the upper levels of the sea captains' homes where distraught ghosts are said to still pace and await their long overdue husbands, and we walked through the cemetery and up to "Gallow's Hill"; the site of the local high school. This building is said to be one of the most haunted places in Lunenburg, and letting ourselves in after hours sent chills up the spine. I don't recall any of the "true" stories our guide told us, but I found this online to share (and I sincerely hope the author doesn't mind me quoting her):

Gallows Hill Legacy?

Terry was working as a carpenter repairing various parts of the Lunenburg Academy. While on his own, finishing some work in one of the towers, the hairs on the back of his neck raised and a track prickled across his scalp. He turned slowly.

In the middle of the tower hung a man, strung up by his neck, the sightless eyes staring straight at Terry. He closed his eyes and shuddered. When he opened them again, the vision was gone. Creeped out, he left the tower for the day. However, twice more before the renovations were completed, Terry saw the poor man. He never did know why the apparition appeared to him, but as it didn't offer him any harm, he let the fellow alone.

Childish company...

Some time later, Terry was working as the night security in the old school. He went in at supper time as the work for the day finished. One of his duties was to go through the three story structure on a walk-around to make sure no one had snuck in to vandalize the place. On his first tour he reached the third floor without incident. He glanced back down the stairwell and realized the light was on in the library. He was sure he had turned it off. He raced back down the stairs thinking he'd missed seeing someone.

Sure enough, the light was on and there was a young boy sitting at one of the tables with a book. "What are you doing?" he asked the lad who looked up, smiled and said, "Just reading."

Although it seemed odd, Terry decided to leave the boy there. After all, he was doing no harm. "You can stay for now," he said. "But not long." The boy nodded. On his next walk through, he found the boy still there. "It's getting dark," Terry said, "Your mother will be wondering where you are. You need to go now."

The boy turned, smiled and---poof---was gone. Terry shivered and shutting out the light and locking the door, continued on his rounds. He did not look in the library again that night. 


Over the years, we've been to a lot of historical places (from Quebec City and Boston to Chichen Itza and Machu Picchu), and although we've never had an actual encounter, it's impossible to deny that long-settled places feel populated with the presence of the dead. It's hard to say, though, if we seek out these places more than others do. Last year, at our annual Christmas Eve party, we had invited some new guests – the family of a sometime friend of Mallory's – as the Dad in the family was my new coworker. We got to talking about various trips we've taken as families (I was surprised that the last time the parents were in Vegas they drove out to Area 51: Dave and I so would have done that if we had thought of it), and they mentioned that they made it a point to stay in the "most haunted hotels in North America" whenever they could. Of course I wanted details about that, and they told me of their one "encounter".

I don't remember where they were (somewhere in the States), and they arranged to join a walking group touring the supposedly haunted cemetery. They were each given listening devices so that the guide wouldn't need to raise his voice in the hallowed space, and as they were climbing a rise between the graves at one point, the son Michael's device went to static. As the family stood in place, trying to get Michael's device to work, the tail end of the group tried to pass them, but the mobility scooter one of them was using went dead at the exact same spot. The family tried to help push the scooter, someone still trying to bang the listening device back to life, and nothing was helping, so the family moved along the path to rejoin the group – and suddenly Michael's listening device was working; and once they had moved away from that particular grave, the other man's scooter started working again too. When they caught up with the guide again and told him their story, he laughed and said, "That was a child's grave you were stopped beside, and in every tour, he finds someone he wants to prank. He must have wanted to play with you, Michael, and when you didn't realise you were being pranked, he stopped that scooter to really get your attention." Yep. That would get my attention.

So there it is: a collection of ghosthunting stories that I really didn't know were mine until Dave mentioned that this is "something we do". 

Happy Halloween!

Strange stories from previous years:

Halloween I
Halloween II
Halloween III

The Schooldays of Jesus

To his and Inés' enquiries about his schooldays the boy responds briefly and reluctantly. Yes, he likes señor Arroyo. Yes, they are learning songs. No, they have not had reading lessons. No, they do not do sums. About the mysterious arc that señora Arroyo sounds at the end of the day he will say nothing.

The Schooldays of Jesus picks up where The Childhood of Jesus left off (and as a result, I can't imagine understanding much of this book without having read the earlier): In this new land where refugees arrive with erased memories and assigned identities, the formerly unacquainted Simón, Inés, and six-year-old David have formed a type of family, and after the authorities in Novilla had threatened to remove the headstrong David and send him to a reformatory school, the trio fled to the faraway city of Estrella. As this book begins, the family arrives at a farm where they are hired on as fruitpickers, and as David runs wild with the local children, Simón and Inés attempt to solve the problem of the boy's education: having proven himself incapable of conforming to the demands of a public school setting, just how will the precocious and stubborn little boy be prepared for life? After the family suffers through an unsatisfactory meeting with a local tutor, the women who own the farm – a trio of aging spinsters known as The Three Sisters – offer to pay the tuition for David to attend the Academy of Dance in downtown Estrella. With gratitude, the family decamps to the city where young David commences his schooldays. Filled with odd situations and nonstop philosophical debates, I was intrigued by The Schooldays of Jesus, but as with Childhood, I can't say that I completely understand author J. M. Coetzee's intentions here (perhaps it will all be resolved in a third volume?); yet, I'm glad to have had had the experience.

Having been assured that the Academy of Dance would give David the most well-rounded education possible, Simón and Inés don't understand when David explains that the students spend their days dancing, “calling the numbers down from the stars”. This process is never made clearer to the reader than it is to the baffled parents:

'Inés showed me your dance chart,' he says. 'What are the numbers for? Are they positions for your feet?'

'It's the stars,' says the boy. 'It's astrology. You close your eyes while you dance and you can see the stars in your head.'

'What about counting beats? Doesn't señor Arroyo count the beats for you while you dance?'

'No. You just dance. Dancing is the same as counting.'

'So señor Arroyo just plays and you just dance. It doesn't sound like any dance lesson I am familiar with. I am going to ask señor Arroyo whether I can sit in on one of his lessons.'

'You can't. You are not allowed. Señor Arroyo says no one is allowed.'

'Then when will I ever see you dancing?'

'You can see me now.'

He glances at the boy. The boy is sitting still, his eyes closed, a slight smile on his lips.

'That is not dancing. You can't dance while you are sitting in a car.'

'I can. Look I am dancing again.'

David is so attracted to the Dance Academy's philosophy, and his parents are so reluctant to oppose his demands, that he eventually insists on becoming a boarder at the school and the family essentially breaks up. As the book is told from Simón's point-of-view, it's easy to identify with the despair he feels as the guardianship of the boy – Simón's entire raison d'être in this new land – is removed. And especially because Simón doesn't understand what is attracting David to the odd education, the ice cold dance teacher Ana Magdalena (finally a Biblical tie-in), and Dmitri; the grungy museum worker who hangs around the dance studio. After a violent crime is committed, the book begins to debate ideas like passion and mercy and justice, and throughout it all, Simón understands that people are laughing at him behind his back; calling him a passionless pedant. 

Much of The Schooldays of Jesus debates the essential nature of things (Is everything quantifiable? How many times can you ask the question “why” before the answer becomes “because”? Do numbers exist in nature or just the human mind?); and as I was reminded that in Childhood Simón impatiently exited a philosophy course that was dwelling on this same topic, it seems significant enough to note some examples.

While still on the farm, the tutor hired by Simón and Inés attempted to teach David the foundations of mathematics by going over the meaning of numbers with him; explaining why objects can be quantified as existing in groups of one, or two, or three, the tutor says, “Every object in the world is subject to arithmetic. In fact every object in the universe.” David reasonably responds, “But not water. Or vomit.” Despite the solid logic of not being able to count water or vomit as discreet units, the tutor leaves, declaring the boy unteachable. In another instance, after patiently answering a string of “why” questions from David, Simón is forced to eventually answer:

A rule is just a rule. Rules don't have to justify themselves. They just are. Like numbers. There is no why for numbers. This universe is a universe of rules. There is no why for the universe.

(To which, of course, David asks, “Why?” and in frustration Simón declares him “silly”). It is also frustrating for Simón when others won't provide him with straightforward answers, as when he tries to get señor Arroyo to explain what David means when he says only the music teacher really understands who he is:

If I were a philosopher I would reply by saying: It depends on what you mean by who, it depends on what you mean by he, it depends on what you mean by is. Who is he? Who are you? Indeed, who am I?

(This is also frustrating for the reader.) And in my final examples, at one point Simón attends a free lecture on Astrology for want of something better to do after David moves out:

Discussion turns to the Spheres: whether the stars belong to the Spheres or on the contrary follow trajectories of their own; whether the Spheres are finite or infinite. The lecturer believes the number of Spheres is finite – finite but unknown and unknowable, as she puts it.

And in a contrasting scene near the end of the book, Simón attends another lecture, this time on the philosophy of measurement; including a debate on whether everything should be measured:

According to one strand of the legend, Metros said there's nothing in the universe that cannot be measured. According to another strand, he said that there can be no absolute measurement – that measurement is always relative to the measurer.

And in a scene that seems intended to tie it all up, some boys from the Dance Academy do their dance to call down the numbers, which some in the audience seem to understand, but which is still all arcane to Simón. And by extension, arcane to me as well. As I opened with, I was interested in this reading experience, but I was pretty sure I wasn't understanding it; so I went to the experts, wondering what the official reviews said. According to The Telegraph:

Is it possible for a novel to be a series of boring conversations punctuated by silly dancing, but still be good? In The Schooldays of Jesus, J M Coetzee pulls it off. This is another opaque book from an ascetic author who finds a way of denying you everything you want while somehow giving you what you need.

As an example of a positive review, that's pretty faint praise. More damning is The Guardian: 

On the evidence of this austere, barely realised mise-en-scène, it is difficult not to feel that Coetzee, like Plato, is no longer much interested in the accidents of our quotidian human world, the shadows on the cave wall. He is after essence alone, the pure, ungraspable fire. In his fidelity to ideas, to telling rather than showing, to instructing rather than seducing us, he does not actually write fiction any more. The Schooldays of Jesus, philosophically dense as it is, is parched, relentlessly adult fare – rather like eating endless bread and bean paste.

I used an unusually high number of quotes in this review in order to give the best sense what The Schooldays of Jesus is like, and even still, you'd have to read the whole thing to really experience it. What I know for sure: if there is a third book in this series, I will happily pick it up; Coetzee has me hooked if confused.

The 2016 Man Booker Prize Longlist

• Paul Beatty - The Sellout
• J.M. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus
• A.L. Kennedy - Serious Sweet
• Deborah Levy - Hot Milk
• Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project
• Ian McGuire - The North Water
• David Means - Hystopia
• Wyl Menmuir - The Many
• Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen
• Virginia Reeves - Work Like Any Other
• Elizabeth Strout - My Name Is Lucy Barton
• David Szalay - All That Man Is
• Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Upon the release of the shortlist (and as my two favourite titles didn't make the cut), this is my ranking for the finalists (signifying my enjoyment of the books, not necessarily which one I think will/should win):

Deborah Levy : Hot Milk 
Ottessa Moshfegh : Eileen 
Paul Beatty : The Sellout 
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing 
Graeme Macrae Burnet : His Bloody Project 
David Szalay : All That Man Is 

Later edit: The Man Booker was won by The Sellout, and although it was not my pick, I'm not dissatisfied by the result.

Death Valley

They drove through the skull of time. Inside the skull, the penetrating light of experiments shone. The skull curved and inside it, dead cows lay with skin hanging. The wool of sheep clung to the wet parts of the skull, floating teeth attached to bone and ate it away, exposing the wire nerves. The world's sand had been heated to glass. They drove along the glass jaw, the flashing nerve highway. This is Nevada, the atomic state.

The blurb for Death Valley refers to the book's style as “hallucinogenic realism”, and as with that opening quote I selected, you're either going to like it or not. As for me, I can't really say that I liked the style – I was often bored and confused – and I was a little turned off by the six degrees of anti-Americanism – at which no one excels like the Canadian intelligentsia – but I do totally respect the literary effort put forth by author Susan Perly; as a war correspondent herself, she has indeed created art (which is always subjective) out of her singular experiences and perspective. I am pleased that this book's appearance on the Giller Prize's longlist this year led me to picking it up, yet I am unsurprised that it didn't become a finalist.

Set in the waning days of 2006, Death Valley recounts a treacherous road trip by a cast of related characters: Vivienne “Baby” Pink is a celebrated photojournalist, under a deadline to shoot some portraits for her next book on soon-to-be-deployed American soldiers; Johnny “Jojo” Coma is her husband, a famous novelist; Val Gold is a government spook, and the long time best friend and roommate of Vivienne and Johnny; Danny Coma (Johnny's brother) is a former diplomat, now a lunatic in a bird suit on the Vegas Strip; and Andy “San Diego” is the young soldier Vivienne chooses to photograph who unwittingly gets tied up in a love triangle as old as the others' friendship. As the characters explore the desert and dunes outside Vegas, the landscape and history of the area allow them to cover the controversial story of 20th century America.

Most prominent in this history are the nuclear bomb tests that took place in the area, and so many connections web out from these tests to other events that it makes the brain spin: ie., this is from where the city of Los Angeles first stole their water, making a wasteland of a former agricultural zone ---> the H bomb was tested here that would be used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima ---> Japanese-American residents of LA were interred in camps in the ghost towns LA created ---> Ansel Adams visited the internment camps and climbed the guard towers to take iconic pictures of the dunes ---> nuclear fallout from the tests blows as far east as New Jersey and the Kodak film factories, causing clouding on the film and affecting photographers. While there are several webs like this, the biggest connection is made between the nuclear tests and Hollywood movies – and while I did appreciate the image of those mannequin-filled test homes being razed by blastwaves (and especially because these facades recall Hollywood sets), this book is filled with constant references to old movies that felt overdone and boring (and, yes, I get that there's irony in all the big golden age stars apparently getting cancer from filming in the Nevada desert – John Wayne played a cowboy dying of cancer in The Shootist...while he was actually dying of cancer from playing cowboys! – but there were just too many movies referenced). 

Even when talking about the diplomatic corps (another big facade, apparently, masking a toxic core), Perly compares the enthusiasm of the first embassies (Benjamin Franklin in Paris, eager to introduce a new nation) to the bloated bureaucracy of the modern (the new US embassy in Baghdad covers a square mile, with 15 000 staff, half of that security), and ties in the cinematic with further webs of connection:

Ben Franklin was not in Paris anymore, and neither was Marlon Brando in Indochine in The Ugly American. Ben Franklin was no longer living in the suburb of Passy, and neither was Marlon Brando, who rented a flat in Passy in The Last Tango in Paris.

In another example, Danny Coma was in Spain during Operation Broken Arrow – which saw a bunch of US nuclear warheads accidentally dropped off the coast of that country – and after having written about Picasso and Franco and Guernica, Basque bombings, and Spanish ties to 9/11, Perly points out that the area of Spanish desert presumably most affected by the lost warheads was where Sergio Leone liked to film his spaghetti westerns; it's just all so laboured. Also laboured was the language in this book (more facades?):

Daniel Coma had twisted his love of language to make meeting about nuclear disarmament, and using the abstract words of meeting at the top levels, a safe thing to touch, to remove the harm from the living by speaking in dead words, to name things best named clearly, best because best for the soul of nations, and to do harm, by naming them in the worst possible way, however on the other hand, named in obfuscation and reification and nuclear capabilities, and here they were.

Huh? Vivienne is the main character of Death Valley, and she's always trying to capture truth, while being aware that her own point-of-view is present in every photograph. (This is also true for Johnny in his novels, and by extension, true for Perly herself.) Because Vivienne's career covers everything from Vietnam to the second Iraq War, she has much to say about America on the world stage. And everything she has to say is presented against this backdrop of “hallucinogenic realism” (so far in this review, I have straightened out many crooked lines to make these connections), and as we follow her down the rabbithole (literally: Alice and the White Rabbit appear alongside a hookah-smoking caterpillar), it's hard as a reader to understand why it must all be so opaque (and, yes, I get that Vivienne feels “concussed” from covering war zones; but was she really put in the path of a modern nuclear test by shadowy government officials, or is this whole road trip a fantasy?)

Along the way, there were some lovely bits of writing that I thought captures what Perly was trying to say:

Where there is no water, Earth's creatures will feel the former riverine life, how we miss our gills, our scales fluorescent magnificent. How things own us when we own things, how winter douses the light to let us rest in our emotions.

But more often, Perly came right out with unadorned opinion:

Unknowing pale orange mutant grasses grew into late afternoon. Masses of soft grey-blue blew up and down. Here was the forensic evidence of poison. America conquered itself, experimented on itself, ravaged its own land, bombed its own western desert back to the Stone Age. America weaponized its own air, which for years concussed its citizens. The land was too big, the space was too large, America's house was supersized, America busyworked into ruin, calling it love of country.

So there it is: I've told all about this book without really telling what it's about. There is much to admire in Death Valley, and while it feels like it ought to be read, I don't know to whom I would recommend it (which feels like the point of having it on a literary longlist).

The  2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist:

Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Andrew Battershill : Pillow
David Bergen : Stranger
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Kathy Page : The Two of Us
Susan Perly : Death Valley
Kerry Lee Powell : Willem De Kooning's Paintbrush
Steven Price : By Gaslight
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People

*Won by Madeleine Thien for Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Not really a surprise, but this is how I ranked the shortlist, entirely according to my own enjoyment level with the reading experience:

Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People

Wenjack

Charlie. His real name is Chanie. But the ones who forced him to that school can't pronounce or don't care to listen and so say it with sharp tongues instead. If we could feel pity for this one, we would. His walk before, his walk to come. Neither is easy. All he wants is home. We follow now, we follow always, not to lead but to capture. Someone, yes, will capture this boy's life.

The genesis of Wenjack sounds like the stuff of urban myth: After Gord Downie's brother rediscovered the old Maclean's article that was written shortly after the death of Chanie (Charlie) Wenjack, a plan was made for several Canadian artists to create memorials for the young boy upon the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 2016, “without saying anything to Canada” about their intention. As a result, Downie wrote an album with both an associated graphic novel (Secret Path, illustrated by Jeff Lemire) and an animated film (created by Terril Calder), A Tribe Called Red included “interludes” about Chanie on their latest album (We Are the HalluciNation), and Joseph Boyden wrote Wenjack (illustrated by Ken Monkman), wrote and performed the spoken word interludes on A Tribe Called Red's album, and wrote a Heritage Minute about Chanie that began appearing this summer. As a celebrated author who obviously approached this project with much thought and passion, Boyden has created a slim novella – it doesn't take an hour to read – that not only brings Chanie Wenjack fully to life, but exposes the larger subject of residential schools; an issue we Canadians like to think of as in the past, but which obviously has had lasting negative effects on the survivors of (and the families of the victims of) those insidious institutions. This book is so short and so beautifully written that no Canadian has an excuse not to pick it up and join in the conversation.

We peer down at the boy, a dark speck on the tracks below, honking out a greeting to him, letting him know we see him, that we witness his lonely walk now a torture. As we follow the tracks that cut through rocks and muskeg and bush we talk back and forth among ourselves about how far we think the boy can go before his body fails. Not far. Our shining eyes catch the day's low light and we can see how these tracks we follow from above stretch impossibly across the harsh earth. For all the chance he has we might as well try to fly to the near-full moon that plans to appear, if only briefly, tonight.

One warm October afternoon in 1966, twelve-year-old Chanie and two of his friends decided to run away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario (nine other children attempted to run away that day and were all quickly caught). The weather turned cold and wet, and after becoming separated from his friends, Chanie continued to follow the train tracks that he vaguely remembered would lead him to his family home; not knowing that that home was 600 km away. Within four days of making his escape, Chanie was found dead beside those unending tracks. In Boyden's retelling of this story, we move between Chanie's first-person experience (of his desperate flight and his recollections of the abuse he was trying to escape at the school), and the points-of-view of various animals that watch his route through the forest; these creatures (from Lynx to Wood Tick) actually being manitous, or Anishinaabe spirits, that have taken on animal forms to bear witness to Chanie's end. 

Despite Chanie and his friends referring to the teachers at their residential school as “Fish Bellies”, Wenjack isn't about overtly blaming “the white man” for what happens to these boys; this is simply Chanie's true story (and while it's obvious that responsibility does fall on Canada's official residential school policy of trying to “kill the Indian in the child”, this book reads more nuanced and less angry than the facts might reasonably provoke). On its own, Wenjack is a quietly powerful read, fully displaying Boyden's gifts of capturing people and nature. As Boyden said in an interview with The Globe and Mail, his intention with this book is for “us as Canadians to understand the fuller history of our country, to take it upon him or herself to learn beyond what you weren’t taught in school. And the importance of that. It’s not so we feel guilty or bad for what people we never met did, it’s beyond that. It’s how do we come together as a nation and move forward together”. And doesn't that sound important? I would encourage everyone to read Wenjack, and the Maclean's article that prompted this project (which, despite being quite short, did a great job of capturing the mood on the scene in the aftermath of Chanie's death), and also take the time to watch the Heritage Minute: as the camera pans back in the final shot, showing young Chanie laying prone beside the tracks and those familiar words appear – A Part Of Our Heritage – you can't help but acknowledge, “This is a part of our heritage”. We should all have the courage and the openness to bear witness to that fact.

And here's the Youtube video of Gord Downie's Secret Path (featuring the art of Jeff Lemire and the animation of Terril Calder):

Tunesday : Situation

Situation

(Moyet, A / Clark, V) Performed by Yazoo

Blue eyed dressed for every situation
Moving through the doorway of a nation
Pick me up and shake the doubt
Baby I can't do without

Move out, don't mess around
Move out, you bring me down
Move out, how you get about
Don't make a sound just move out

I remember only for an hour
Move right through me can you feel the power
I don't know what's going on
It scares me but it won't take long

Move out, don't mess around
Move out, you bring me down
Move out, how you get about
Don't make a sound just move out

Now he's in control he is my lover
Nations stand against him he's your brother
Been a long time, been a long time now
I'll get to you somehow

Move out, don't mess around
Move out, you bring me down
Move out, how you get about
Don't make a sound just move out

As I wrote about last week, when Rob and I left Lethbridge for Edmonton, Curtis offered us a place to stay (on his floor) and our plans didn't go too far beyond that. For weeks, Rob and I just hung out, often drinking in the evening and typing out hilarious short stories on Curtis' manual typewriter (hence the header photo) while he was out working or hooking up with some guy, and eventually, Curtis began to wonder when we were going to start looking for jobs or an apartment of our own; we were not only stretching his resources (he was feeding us, too) and his patience, but it was cramping Curtis' style that he could never bring a hookup back to his own apartment while the two of us camped out there. As for the song this week: I loved Alison Moyet and Yaz/Yazoo around this time, and while most of the tunes I could have chosen for today were unrelated love songs (I loved Don't Go and Only You but couldn't find a way to use them this week), I got a giggle out of the chorus for Situation:

Move out, don't mess around

Move out, you bring me down

Move out, how you get about

Don't make a sound just move out

Eventually, our incredibly patient friend Curtis got to the point where he told us it was time to move out (don't mess around). 

We didn't have a lot of seed money, but Rob and I did find an affordable two bedroom apartment a block away from Curtis' place and we moved out, at the beginning of December if I'm remembering it right. We had very little furniture -- it was Curtis who pointed out that Ikea sold thick foam pads and sheets to fit them as pseudomattresses, and we each bought one -- and we were happy enough that the former tenants of the apartment left a large credenza behind in the living room that we used as a TV stand (for my tiny, portable black and white television/cassette player combo). Fancy living. And still we didn't worry ourselves about getting jobs -- I have no idea how I thought life was just going to work out for us, but we had just enough money to feed ourselves with, and as the beginning of the next month (and the paying of rent) approached, we neither looked for work or thought too much about it. I can't explain this.

Around this time, some other friends of ours moved to Edmonton, and when they found a five bedroom house to rent, they asked Rob and me if we wanted to move in with them in January. Sure did! A few days after the first of the month -- after successfully dodging the rent-seeking landlord -- we packed up all of our belongings (which still all fit into my Honda Civic) in the middle of the night, and we moved to the new house. (And I have to admit that I have zero recollection of how we paid our share of that first month's rent. Maybe Rob's parents gave him cash for Christmas? I remember that I met Dave that February and that I still hadn't received "my big" Christmas present from my own parents by that point; I remember little else about that first Christmas on my own; there may have been a pine branch decorated with cigarette package tinfoil balls?) Rob and I had to pretend to be university students in order to be put on the new lease (as we weren't working), and it was stupid to need to keep up this lie as the manager for the house lived in a basement apartment beneath us (and Bernie was a weird dude --like Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys -- and he would make us gifts of his homemade wine, hit on the homely girl who lived with us [Joyce; as if he even had a chance with her], and go tearing out to scream at his German Shepherd that was kept chained in the yard).

Some random memories from this time: Curtis would buy a cheese sauce mix and bulk noodles to make us homemade Kraft Dinner, and it sticks out in my memory, still, as some of the best food I ever ate.

I said that Rob and I would type out hilarious short stories, but the talent was really all him; he was just one of those naturally funny and clever people. And if I had ever before thought I could write a book, seeing an actually creative person throw out random brilliance cured me of that delusion.

Rob had oral surgery while we were in our apartment and he was miserable as he had to take his meals through a straw for  few weeks. He was so miserable that I surprised him with a kitten for his birthday, and he loved her.  He ended up naming her Badaboum (we for some reason had a French language children's book -- La Petite Chat Qui Ne Pouver Pas Descendre [about a kitten that was always climbing up things and getting stuck there] and "badaboum" was the sound she'd make when she'd fall).

As I mentioned, my mother took her time sending me my "big gift" for Christmas this year, but I do remember that when she asked me what I'd like for Christmas and I replied, "An iron", she sent me a folding travel iron from Consumers Distributing (a cheapo catalogue storefront where you'd go in, flip through the catalogues on display, fill in a form for what you'd want, hand it to the clerk, and wait for someone to bring it up from the back; a really cheapo way to shop). My takeaway from this was that my mother didn't really believe that I was gone from home for good; why would I need to own an iron?

Badaboum on my camera strap. Don't fall!

This week's Tunesday doesn't progress my story by much -- it has the feel of a placefiller -- but I needed to transition to next week, when my life really started to take shape. No regrets sharing this song!

The Parcel

When it came to the opening of a parcel, Madhu did not believe in the conventional approach wherein the madam and a couple of prostitutes pinned the parcel down to a bed while the customer broke her in. The parcels momentarily turned into eels, the terror electric, until their muscles went limp. There was no doubt that this was the quickest method, and it required minimal effort on the brothel owner's part, but Madhu surmised that in the long run it was counterproductive. The sudden breaking in dislodged the parcels so badly that they teetered on the edge of madness for years, and some clients had a problem sleeping with what they thought were mental patients.

Author Anosh Irani grew up in Mumbai, adjacent to the red-light district known as Kamathipura. Having long been fascinated by the inhabitants of those infamous few blocks, Irani has now spotlighted them in The Parcel; a book that explores the lives of some of the most vulnerable participants in that city's sex trade. I've read quite a few books set in India, and while the focus of these novels has usually been the underclasses and the particular hardships that Indian society imposes on them, The Parcel illuminates a whole new substrata; and for the knowledge I have gleaned, I am pleased to have read this book. As for the actual execution of an artful piece of literature, I'm not sure that Irani totally pulled it off. 

Oh, look at this rickety face
Look where it is placed
On the body of a woman
Who was once a man
But is now neither, neither, neither.

To begin, our narrator Madhu is a hijra: identifying as neither girl nor boy but an in-between third gender –Neither here nor there, neither desert nor forest, neither earth nor sky, neither man nor woman – those born with a penis tend to become eunuchs by choice in order to express their inner natures. As it would seem with every possible subgroup of people, hijras have their place in Indian society – they attend and perform at weddings and births, they offer blessings on street corners (which can take the form of aggressive begging), and although some hijras might look down their noses at the sex trade, many become popular prostitutes – and based on the presence of eunuchs in the sacred Hindu texts, hijras are tolerated, if marginalised, by the rest of society. As the book begins, Madhu is a forty-year-old hijra, and although she had been a much desired prostitute in her youth, she left the sex trade when her body and mind finally revolted. Still feeling a debt to the aging hijra guru, Gurumai, who had helped her transition into her truer self, Madhu now spends her days as a beggar on the streets (after also revolting against the idea of becoming a wedding dancer) in order to contribute to their hijra household. As a person of no real power, Madhu is incapable of resisting when a local madam, Padma, requests her services in readying a new parcel for “opening”; and although the parcel is a ten-year-old Nepalese girl who had been sold by her aunt (for less than the price of a sacrificial goat), Madhu is jaded enough from her own career in the brothel to understand that her job is to toughen up the girl, not to offer her kindness or support. 

As Madhu looks back on her own life, the best parts are her confusing childhood – expected to act like a boy by her traditional parents, little Madhu couldn't help but lisp and sashay despite the routine beatings – and from her older perspective, it was moving when she began to wonder if Gurumai had indeed “saved” her from her stifling homelife; what if Gurumai had merely been in search of “parcels” herself when she offered Madhu a life as a hijra? What if Madhu simply hadn't given her parents enough time to grow to accept their son's true nature? What would happen if she returned home now after a quarter century without contact? 

With various backstories for secondary characters, Irani did a good job of showing the many paths that might lead a person to Mumbai's red-light district (all of which demonstrate India's persistent patriarchal devaluing of the nonmasculine). As with other Mumbai-set books I've read, the booming real estate market threatens to displace that city's most vulnerable citizens (and while bulldozing the tumble-down red-light district might seem like a civic good, where would all the hijras and prostitutes go to live?) So while there was much good and informative in The Parcel, I wasn't engaged by the actual writing; Irani did more telling than showing, and despite the emotionally charged nature of the situation, I was never emotionally connected to the characters. I've read many positive reviews for The Parcel – it's not up for some big literary awards for no reason – but I'm going to share the concluding paragraph from the Macleans review because it succinctly says what I'm trying to get at:

To be sure, the exhaustive, sometimes vivid detail with which Vancouver-based Irani depicts hijra customs, brothel life and the world of sex trafficking suggests much research. But knowledge, or rather the impulse to share it, can be a mixed blessing for fiction, and that often proves the case here. This being a novel seeking to answer, rather than provoke, inquiry, the feeling of fullness we get by the end is ultimately more pedagogic than aesthetic.

I am glad to have read The Parcel and recommend it as an informative depiction of a group of marginalised people I had never before heard of. I am really torn between three and four stars and am going to round down, but just barely.

Governor General's Literary Awards (English Fiction) Finalists 2016:

Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates

Anosh Irani : The Parcel
Kerry Lee Powell : Willem de Kooning's Paintbrush

Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Katherena Vermette : The Break

I just barely got through the nominees in time (the winner will be announced tonight), but if I got to choose who gets the GG this year, it would be Katherena Vermette for The Break.

*Won by Thien; not my favourite, but not really a surprise.

2016 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize nominees:

Michael Helm for After James
Anosh Irani for The Parcel
Kerry Lee Powell for Willem de Kooning's Paintbrush
Yasuko Thanh for Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains
Katherena Vermette for The Break

 I would give it to The Break.

*And in the end, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize went to Thanh for Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains.