Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 110

parsing The Blue Flower

Violent windstorm just beginning. They've warned us the power might go out, so Wayson is not coming for Sunday dinner as usual. Which is good, because it means I don't have to watch the Oscars with him and can liberate my evening. PBS is showing My passion for trees with Judi Dench, which sounds like more fun than a parade of fancy dresses. Though I will undoubtedly peek.

Went to a class at the Y this morning; the instructor has fabulous music, including lots of inspiring gospel, unusual for an exercise class. "O Happy Day" - such limited lyrics, such glorious, rich, passionate vocals.
(Oh, happy day
(oh, happy day)
Oh, happy day
(oh, happy day)
When jesus washed
(when jesus washed)
oh, when he washed
(when jesus washed)
when jesus washed
(when jesus washed)
he washed my sins away!
(oh, happy day)
Ah, happy day
(oh, happy day)
Oh, happy day
(oh, happy day)
oh, happy day
(oh, happy day)
It made my heart, if not my feet, soar. How grateful I am to African-Americans who have graced us with so much magnificent music.

Yesterday, my friend Wendy O'Brian's book club, Books and Bourbon, to discuss Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, a difficult, maddeningly obtuse, marvellous novel about the 18th century German Romantic poet Novalis, his life and family and his chaste love for an ordinary 12-year old girl. The meaning of the blue flower, mentioned several times in a story Novalis writes and reads to others, is never made clear, but it's thought to symbolize yearning - the longing we all have for the divine. Or else, as one member said, it's "the myth we need to believe in, that makes life work for us." Hmmm - I wonder what myth that is for me. And for you?

I love Fitzgerald particularly because she started writing late in life - her mid-sixties - and achieved great success. Here's a typical paragraph of her writing - with phenomenal research and recreation of a distant time, gorgeous descriptives, subtle, sly humour.
Both girls were in white, run up by the same dressmaker, but Sidonie seemed to be moving in flight or in a drift of whiteness, delicate, weightless, strange to the onlookers, while Louise could only hope not to hear, at least for this summer, the suggestion that it was perhaps time Fraulein Brachmann should give up wearing white altogether.

Listening to Tapestry on CBC, a young woman being interviewed about millenials burning out - and I have to turn it off, because she uses 'vocal fry' - that gravelly catch in the back of the throat, the words drawn out and creaked as if the speaker can't quite make the effort to push the sound out. Can't stand listening to it, or to 'up talk', each sentence sounding like a question. Like my friend Chris to the left, I'm officially an intolerant crabby old fart.

Hooray!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMtbWt0wRyM

reno woe #6749

Saturday morning, 9.30 a.m., Jean-Marc and Kevin are already upstairs arguing about the spiral staircase, the open wooden staircase to the third floor which will be a bitch to fix. The central job of this renovation is to improve the small steps and then enclose that staircase, so there's an actual door to the third floor, to make the attic room more private. But how to do it with an awkward creation dangling in space?

Yesterday's frustration: my handyman John and I set out with a shopping list, headed to a far-away wood store to buy trim for the baseboards, doors, and windows. But we stopped at Home Depot, only ten minutes away, to get a few things first and while there discovered their trim. Why not buy it here? So after an hour of measuring and looking and stacking, we did and brought it home triumphantly - it's already primed! saving time and money! - to hear cries of horror from JM. It's generic, cheesy, horrible, he hates it. What we need is interesting real wood trim, which is only available from the store miles away.

My choice - to say, @#$#@ you, I don't mind generic trim, or to arrange to take it all back and start again, thereby cancelling a day and spending far more.

Trim. Who notices trim? And yet, if it's wrong, somehow it registers, I guess. So I guess this time, JM is right. We have to start again.

And once more I ask myself, what was in my mind when I set out on this renovation adventure? A breezy notion of fixing things that had always bothered me in my 32 years in this house. Home improvements - were ever two words more chilling? I now know why people joke about the Money Pit. My thrifty self, buying second hand and re-using everything, now tossing money blithely out the window - here, take some! Help yourself! We must have the artisanal trim!

Once you start, you have to keep going; there is no turning back. Lady Bountiful here is keeping lots of nice men employed through this long hard winter.

When I walk upstairs into the light, the new light from the freshly-liberated skylight that used to be trapped in a closet and now illuminates the entire floor, I sigh with pleasure. And then I look at what remains to be done and my ever-swelling line of credit, and I feel sick.

A quote I copied from the Montaigne book feels very apt here:
Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we build, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations. Rebecca West
I'm dealing with disagreeable, despair, and blackened foundations - plunged into, as my father called it, the human search for beshitment. But ... there will, too, be shelter for those who come after me, and it will be full of light. This endless turmoil will be worth it, after all. I'm sure of it.

I think.

PS. Two hours later: proposed solution, partial mock-up. Hooray.

Michel de Montaigne, my new hero

OMG could she be more boring? I apologize, dear bloggees, for the tedium of paint colours. I did get a bit obsessive there for awhile. The firstest of first world problems. Onward.

In the midst of my "wind's breath" trauma, I've been reading (skimming a bit, I confess) two library books that need to go back today: Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: or a life of Montaigne, which is wonderfully dense, and Patricia Hampl's The Art of the Wasted Day, which also deals, partially, with Montaigne. Grief-stricken after the death of her husband, Hampl wanders in the book a bit too much but ends up in France, visiting Montaigne's tower near Bordeaux, where he retired in 1571 to write his Essais - the essays that, 450 years ago, began the art of autobiographical non-fiction.

Now it's on my list, to go to Montaigne's tower. To pay homage to the man who fired up the love of essays. Here's how Sarah introduces him:

This idea – writing about oneself to create a mirror in which other people recognize their own humanity – has not existed for ever. It had to be invented. And, unlike many other cultural inventions, it can be traced to a single person: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, a nobleman, government official and wine-grower who lived in the Perigord area of south-western France from 1533 to 1592.
He wrote 107 essays: Of Friendship; Of Cannibals: Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes; Of Names; Of Cruelty; Of Thumbs; Of Experience … They rarely offer to explain or teach anything. Montaigne presents himself as someone who jotted down whatever was going through his head when he picked up his pen, capturing encounters and states of mind as they happened. He used these experiences as the basis for asking himself questions, above all the big question that fascinated him… How to live?
How to live, indeed.

And here's Hampl: The great contract of literature consists in this: you tell me your story and somehow I get my story. If we are looking for another reason to explain the strangely powerful grip of the first-person voice on contemporary writing, perhaps we need look no further than the power of Anne Frank's equation: that to write one's life enables the world to preserve and, more, to comprehend its history.

Now I need to read Montaigne's essays myself. And especially to write a few; my work has been interrupted by reno trauma. Perhaps that's what I'll write about: On Paint Chips.

Not!

discovering greige

A cold but sunny day, and I'm trapped inside by the painters, who've been here all day doing the priming coat - I needed to be around to supervise. Have barely moved my sluggish bod, just sitting here enjoying the paint fumes.

Or perhaps not.

A great treat, though - on the recommendation of my old friend Duncan Fremlin, who is a banjo-playing real estate agent, no, a banjo player who makes a living selling real estate, Lucie Brand came today to consult on paint colours. She doesn't charge a lot and she came with a huge briefcase bulging with swatches; we spent an hour making decisions. The cool grey I chose for the hall is too much of a contrast with the soft beigey-yellow of my living-room - who'da thunk it? We chose a "greige" - a grey-beige, instead. "Wind's breath," it's called, how can I resist? My hall will be the breath of the wind! I will breeze through it like a swallow. The other colours I'd chosen, a yellow and a blue, she liked; I just needed an expert's approval. And then we chose a slightly darker greige, Revere pewter, for the chimney brick. Obviously, somebody makes a living coming up with these names; what a fun job. Or perhaps not. I can see eventually going mad.

Ridiculous to need a hand to hold through such a simple process, but it was a great help. Because - 158 different shades of grey.

There are 3 guys still upstairs at 5.30; we'd hoped they'd be finished priming today and be ready for colour tomorrow, but not even close. Of course.

My dear Wayson came for our usual Sunday night dinner last night, bearing 11 red roses. He can be my Valentine anytime. And then we watched Steve Paikin interview Anna Porter and Barry Callaghan about their careers in CanLit. Barry was particularly apt when he talked about how he hates Stephen Harper so much, he can hardly bear to mention his name. Me either.

Please be careful, Canada. There's a bit of a scandal swirling around Trudeau, yes, though it's not something appalling by any means, and I'm sorry he's had to lose his closest advisor because of it; that's not good for any of us. And just look at the alternative, the leering hyena Scheer, made in the Harper mold. Please God, no.

superb Oslo

Tell someone you're going to see a play about failed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and watch their brows wrinkle. That's the thrilling plot of Oslo, a powerful, important play about what it takes to be a peacemaker. A Norwegian couple with links to the government took it upon themselves, in 1992-93, to bring Palestinian and Israeli negotiators to the table in neutral Oslo, to try to find common ground, gambling that when these men came to see each other as human beings and not as monstrous enemies, progress would ensue. And that is what happens. The characterizations - in the script and on the stage - are superb, the tension mounts; one Israeli is arrogant and the next is worse, one of the Palestinians is a surly hardline Communist who hates everyone, surely nothing can happen here.

And yet it does, inch by inch, as you hold your breath. At one point, two of the men find out they have daughters with the same name, a tiny moment with vast repercussions. They manage to make a deal. Tragically, it did not last, but for a brief moment on our embattled planet, peace broke out. A deeply moving play in a fantastic production.

In the spirit of letter writing mentioned last post, I just emailed Mirvish Productions to thank them for making this town so rich with theatre. At Oslo, I talked to the couple sitting in front who are from Timmins; they fly into Toronto regularly to see theatre and eat at good restaurants. They'd seen the new Sting show,  then The Father, a great new production of a French play about Alzheimers by a very small theatre company, and Oslo. The woman sitting next to me, with whom by the end I exchanged email addresses - we will, it turned out, be in Paris at exactly the same time in April - goes often to the theatre alone, like me. What a richness of choice we have, with so much on offer. Grateful.

And grateful to former students who write to tell me their news; just got this: Just wanted to send you a note that I have finally completed a memoir that was sparked in your class. I’ll be self publishing in June. I would love to invite you to the book launch in Toronto in mid August. Thanks for your class.


It's Family Day, a holiday, and all is still. No one here, no banging, no drilling, mudding, or sanding. There's beautiful fresh snow to shovel, a house in chaos to sort out, a Wayson to invite for dinner. We are alive, my friends. It doesn't get better than that.

PS Wish I could show you - there's a cardinal at the feeder, flashing scarlet against the snow, in the sun. Winter is brutal but with moments of great beauty, even more appreciated because ... rare.

Margaret walks the Camino

First, most importantly, friend and student Margaret Lynch wrote a beautiful essay for my home class on walking the Camino and now has read it on CBC radio's The Sunday Edition; it will air tomorrow but she sent us a copy. It brought tears to my eyes, not just for the fine writing and thought, but because Margaret has come so far as a brave and honest writer with a powerful story to tell. She has just begun; you'll be hearing more from her. Brava!
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-for-february-17-2019-1.5017616/a-pilgrim-s-journey-this-woman-hiked-hundreds-of-kilometres-to-find-peace-1.5020907?fbclid=IwAR0td6ie8PCDisj9dmyWDPDhgXoOc0J9w0QuqM5UldUJngCocTHw_2AJouc 

And while I'm in celebration mode - I got a moving email yesterday from one of the greatest stars of the Canadian stage, Martha Henry, to whom I'd written ten years ago about a Stratford production she directed that I loved. The note speaks for itself - a blessing.
My dear Beth - I’m clearing out some old papers today and came across an email from you from 2009 which I had printed! - talking about our production of Three Sisters. I read it again and nearly wept, I was so happy at what you said and so proud. Thank you. I may keep this for yet another ten years......! How thoughtful and kind of you to write this. It meant a lot to me. Clearly!   

I've made a lifelong habit - sometimes to the amusement and even scorn of my friends - of sending letters of both complaint and praise. How great that this one made a difference. A mitzvah. When someone impresses you, let them know!

It's Saturday, but Kevin and Ed are here. They need to finish mudding, patching, sanding now, because Monday is a holiday and the painters come in Tuesday. Yes, the painters - we still have no doors, tons to do at a basic level, but it seems like a good time to paint.

So I am going mad. JM suggested I hire someone to advise about colours, but a request to a local tastemaker let me know he charges $700 for a "colour consultation." We won't be having that, thank you very much. "How hard can it be?" I said blithely. And now have been to Home Hardware twice for sample colours, until they ran out of sample size pots, so this morning I went down to a paint store on Queen Street East and came back with one pot that's almost identical to one I already had.

$700 for an expert eye is starting to look more like a good investment.

I have found a beautiful yellow for the spare bedroom; done. But I would like a soft grey-blue for my bedroom and a soft grey for the hall. What I now know is that the paint chips do not in any way resemble what goes on the wall. My first attempts at being Mark Rothko - a grey that's too white, so next, a grey that's too dark, like concrete. 
For my bedroom, two lovely grey-blues on the chip that are a too-vivid blue on the wall, absolutely nothing like on paper.Here's what confronted me at Sherwin-Williams this morning - a tiny bit of headache-making choice.
First world problems.

The sun is shining but it's cold, and the sidewalks are icy. Today's note in the Annals of Aging - as I walked carefully along Queen Street this morning, wearing my maroon velvet hat and scarf, I passed a woman not dressed for the weather and high on a drug of some kind, crack or an opiate. She said something, and then passed me and said, "Oh I'm sorry, I thought you were a man." And then she went on, "My mother taught me to always be polite to elderly people, so I'm really sorry."

A knife in the heart! I'm hopeless at choosing colours, and I look mannish and ... elderly! Elderly! I, a mere, a youthful 68! The only thing that will make me feel better about that is chocolate. And remembering that I did a tiny thing that made the magnificent Martha Henry happy.

And thinking about my family. Since Anna and fam will not be going away for Family Day, she decided to spring for a treat - she, her best friend Holly, and the boys are all staying in one room at the Delta Chelsea down the road, where there's a swimming pool, games room, playroom, self-serve restaurant... I took them for dinner there last night and then we went to the playroom, where my grandsons were bounding leaping falling throwing whirling dashing bouncing building sliding joking crashing chatting vrooming. Non-stop.

Went home to recover and watch The Philadelphia Story. I've seen bits of it but never the whole thing. A wonderful film. Imagine working with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart, talk about the dream team.

My dream team is sanding outside my office door. Happy Family Day to you all. This elderly person - NOT! - is off to eat a lot of chocolate and fuss about paint chips.

one-bedroom basement suite for rent

My basement apartment will be available May 1 - now not a bachelor but a furnished one-bedroom apartment with washer/dryer. At least, that's the hope - that I'll have moved out of that bedroom myself by then. If you know a quiet someone who needs a nice place downtown and can be flexible about time - because who knows when you're @#$@#$ renovating? - please get in touch.

Re Reno-land: Ed just said, if we let any more people up here, we'll have to charge admission. Not only are he and Kevin up high on ladders, mudding and sanding, but today, four Ukrainian window installers are here, plus, for a bit, their very hefty boss. TAK, I am hearing. The old windows dated from 1980 and several no longer closed. Now they're better insulated too. I hope my heating bills reflect that.
 middle bedroom
 my bedroom
bathroom

Moving right along. We will paint next week, apparently. Still tons to do, however, including the entire third floor which has not even been started yet - big electrician holes in the walls with insulation pellets spilling out. Joy.

But it's sunny, bright hot sun; after the last two wretched days, it's bliss, and thank god, because the windows are out but it's not nearly as cold as it was. Yesterday was particularly appalling - it had rained on the snow, and the streets were awash with slush. (Say that fast.) I got to the Y for Carole's class, but barely, and then came home to shovel. And shovel. Why go to the Y for exercise when you live in Canada, the great northland?

eye of the storm

Mother Nature hit us hard today - tons of snow and then sleet, hard sleet that slashed the face, and high winds, so bad, the schools were cancelled for the first time in years, to the joy of a small boy of my acquaintance. His mother posted on FB that she'd be happy to take any kids whose parents were suddenly strapped for childcare; once more her generosity amazes me.

The roads first were clogged with heavy snow and then dangerously icy; the trees are coated with ice and some places in the city have lost power. And of course, today, rather than huddling at home as usual, I had to be out and about, first for a welcome visit with my beloved psych - wait, she told me she is not a psychiatrist, she's a psychologist and psychoanalyst. All that matters is the psyche part - she understands mine. After today, I may not go back for a long time; the crises have passed, I'm calmer about the reno and other things. But still, there's such comfort in that bright small room with a small, quiet, wise woman sitting in it. Listening.

A bit later, slogging through the snow up the street to a piano lesson. I haven't practiced often because the men are here all day, I won't play while they are, and by the time they leave I'm ready for my wine. But still, I've managed to get every so often to the Moonlight and a few other things, and for some reason was unleashed at my lesson - he was impressed, or at least he said he was, though it's his job to be encouraging, of course. I think I decided to stop feeling apologetic for not being Glenn Gould and just play the hell out of stuff. It was fun.

Home to shovel and shovel and shovel some more, then to a memorial event at the Y, no easy feat - the streetcar ended up not moving because the wires were frozen so I went to find a cab. Last year my dear Carole, the Wednesday runfit instructor, and her husband Brian, 17 years older and already afflicted with Alzheimer's, celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary at the Y. Tonight we honoured Brian, who died at 87 two weeks ago in his sleep with Carole at his side. I learned a lot I didn't know about him - that in his childhood during the Depression, his mother left the family and his father was forced to put Brian and his younger brother into an orphanage. In his first marriage, Brian had six children and was determined to provide them with everything he didn't have as a child, and obviously did; they were all there tonight, with their children and grandchildren. Brian belonged to the Y for 60 years; it's where he and Carole met. They continued their athletic life, their running, together. A member stood up tonight to speak about him and asked Carole about his best marathon time: 3 hours 34 minutes, to a muttering of appreciation from the crowd. She was asked about his worst marathon and told a funny story about ending up at the wrong start location in Atlanta.

I thought, another reason I love the Y - what other memorial event would be fixated on the dead man's marathon times? The room was full of lovely fit people. I'm the bottom of the barrel in comparison, but I was there. And then friend John, the best of the best, gave me a ride home.

You've gotta be tough to be Canadian. Kindness helps a lot. We get through, and we help each other through.

PS Was just on a writer's site on FB and found a few words there about the topic from Abigail Thomas, one of my favourite memoirists. So I wrote her a message, and she wrote one back. I know Zuckerberg is creepy and our privacy is gone. But there are pleasures to be had on FB.
Abigail Thomas  thanks so much. really nice of you to say. LikeComment12 February 20:52Comment history  Beth Kaplan  Abigail Thomas it's thrilling to read your advice here. I am a huge fan of your wise and beautiful writing and truth telling. Thank you for weighing in on this vital issue. 

moody blues on a Monday morning

AAAGH! Going mad. If I do not make a change to my Aeroplan account by this weekend, I will lose my points. So I have to buy something through that account, and let me tell you, they could not make it more complicated and infuriating. I have spent the morning trying to find something I actually need and then trying to figure out how to buy it and then calling the Aeroplan number to get assistance, all of which have led me exactly nowhere. I consider myself a sentient, even fairly intelligent human being, but they've got me bamboozled. Phooey.

Monday morning, and there's a sprinkling of fresh snow inside and outside - outside it's white and cold, inside it's plaster dust showering down from on high; sanding has begun.
The hall without bannister
Kevin in my bedroom

Ed on high. This is part of the hallway cathedral space newly created. Light!

A quiet weekend. I went to see The play that goes wrong which was indeed hilarious, full of theatre-going-wrong jokes - mugging actors or ones who forget lines, doors that won't open, falling down set etc. It was the kind of British comedy that's delightful and vanishes instantly. No heft at all, but sometimes, particularly on a February day, a good belly laugh is more than okay.

Wayson came for dinner last night and we watched more Pride and Prejudice - go Darcy! - and a bit of the induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - go Moody Blues, these aging British rockers are invincible - and the Grammys, but it was just too too for us fogeys.
Speaking of fogeys, I think I will start a regular section here called Annals of Aging - not just the minuses but the plusses too. But mostly minuses. For example, the Y has installed, in the women's health club bathroom, a cruel device - a vast and powerful magnifying mirror. A horrifying sight awaits me each time I venture to take a peek - each line and crevice, each mole and blotch and sag and sprouting hair - sigh. However. I am far wiser now than when my skin was firm and clear. It's worth it. Without question.

Today in the Star there was an article about a new tech firm; the founder is quoted as saying, "I've even got grandmothers learning to do it!" The premise being that there is no creature on earth more backward or harder to teach than a grandmother. If I had that young man here, I would bonk him on the head with a frying pan. No, I would crack the Y's magnifying mirror over his head, thereby killing two birds, so to speak.

On the plus side in the Annals of Aging, my best friend Lynn and I Skyped for an hour on Sunday, from Montpellier to Toronto, much to catch up on, including our children and grandchildren, her work and mine, their renovation which is stalled by French bureaucracy and mine which is steaming ahead, and the quality of cashmere she gets at a certain store at sale time. We have known each other 51 years - almost as long as the Moody Blues have been together. Pure gold.

dining with the fam

A blessing tonight. The restaurant where Sam has worked for a few years, the Emerson, is closing soon for a renovation, and he has found another job. We love the place and will miss it, so tonight, we all met there for dinner, Anna, her boys, and I. We know all the waitstaff and they know us, know the boys, who are right at home there. Ben immediately sat on a bar stool colouring and chatting with one of the waiters, while Uncle Sam mixed cocktails.
We had a delicious meal with the best service imaginable. One lovely thing - I'd found out that my friend from the Y, Karim, a young man from Jordan, lives nearby and urged him to drop in sometime, look for the tall tattooed guy, say hello. After many months, he chose by chance to do so tonight, so I was able to introduce him to everyone. A new waiter there, one I'd not met, came up to me and said, "I have to tell you how much I've enjoyed working with your son."
"I'm glad," I said. "He's a good guy." And he is.

And then Ben turned to the nice young couple at the table next to us and said, "I have to go pee now." He often greets strangers on the street - "HI GUYS!" which is such a cheery way to go through life. As we left tonight, he turned at the door and bellowed, "BYE UNCLE SAM!"

It was a freezing, bleak night, but I was warm warm warm as I rode home, noticing, at one point, that I was the only person in the subway car with pale pasty skin. I pity the poor souls who've come from warm climates to make their homes here, at least, on a February day like this. But with the right coat and boots and hat and scarf and mitts, we'll all survive.

Came home to a note from my dear friend Lani, to whom I'd sent the manuscript of the memoir - she was there for a lot of the stories it describes and even appears several times in the book, with her own name. She told me she was glad I'd used her real name, not a pseudonym, because she took so many drugs back then, she might not have known which character she was.

She wrote how much she'd enjoyed the book. I was thoroughly engrossed in this woman's journey. There was a lot of humour (so glad you kept in the cheese tray story), a lot of angst, a lot of joy. The character grew and evolved. She was loveable and I cheered for her. 

Now that's good news! Let's hope one day a publisher agrees. I'm working on the Uncle Edgar story - now have 14,000 words. What it'll end up being, a long article or a chapter in a book of essays, I'm not sure. I need to do research, but that means being in my office, which is nearly uninhabitable with junk and dust, almost all my materials in stacked boxes. But I still have lots of resource material I've been able to unearth.

Tomorrow, another treat: The Play That Goes Wrong, which I missed in both London and New York. I could use a good belly laugh right about now. In five minutes - Bill Maher on HBO. His sarcastic comedy keeps me sane.