On my father’s side of the family I come from Quaker stock. One of my father’s relatives ran a boarding house for theatricals in Manchester or maybe Ashton-under-lyne which Charlie Chaplin once stayed in. I think she may have been the same woman who had an affair with the canal keeper and had three children by different men which at the turn of the century was quite something.
My father’s sister would not tell me this story until I reached the grand old age of 21. She considered it so scandalous.
Had an inspired visit to the Mountain View Cemetery this evening. I’ve been trying to persuade a few folk to accompany me there, but no takers. Unfortunately I did get a bit confused and somehow thought there’d be a car park and ended up driving in, then panicking I wasn’t supposed to drive in, then got myself trapped trying to find a way out.
When I finally found an arrangement and re-entered the place I looked at two parts on either side of the road. I don’t entirely know what I expected to find in there, but it wasn’t what I found. I left with a bunch of questions, which is always very satisfying.
One of which was if your house or childhood home backs on to the graveyard do you wander over and ride your bike or play hockey in it. I noticed a couple strolling through and two adults skateboarding.
There are also great big patches where no one seems to be buried at all and they’re constructing some strange, unattractive breeze block structure whose purpose is unclear. The sign says Mountain View where Vancouver Remembers. But I misread it at first as Mountain View where Vancouver Remains .. and I keep thinking it would make a better sign.
The other night while at an art talk that I found particularly insufferable all I could hear in my head was a wild pounding drumbeat that I’d heard earlier that day while listening to the small man’s composition. I was sat on the floor at the talk, since the space was full and small. It was so aurally and physically uncomfortable, but my feet started doing their own thing.
At one point I realized the talk had become white noise and this pounding drumbeat had taken me over. It was very odd. Claustrophobic yet convenient. I noticed it even began to infringe on the rhythm of my knitting needles.
Three of my ma’s cows are dying. The other day I was talking to her on the telephone and she described how with milk fever the cow falls down or sits down and may never get up. They’re big enough animals, even the pedigree ones who are small compared to Angus (Sp?) so it’s not like you can give them a hoist and a hug like you could a cat. It was a terrible image that of the farmer devoted to her heifer and to lose it this way. A slow and painful detaching. Helpless. A wasting. Spectating. The other two have different maladies. One of the three is certain not to make it.
She described how she had to scramble to provide for her two motherless calves. They need a primary milk from the mother she calls “beastings”. She’d some frozen from last year’s calving, but it ran out. She called on a man who helped her with some of his own and a black bucket of milk to tide her over.
When I think of the incredible labour that goes into raising cows, especially the way my ma raises them, it would be like having your years of work go up in flames. And like all loss it’s final.
Proustian malady 447. Rotation #4
Of all the possible ends to this farine free week on a Friday I did not expect it. It’s true I was dreaming. It’s true it was perhaps a vicious dream either a high action Scooby Doo style leaping over icebergs, no that was the night before dream, no it was another dream, I woke and recalled only a stern voice yelling “These are basic notes!” and perhaps I was aiming a bucket at the head of the yeller and for whatever reason my arm was above my head. I put it down. And it’s true there was a sharp pain the next time I moved and it’s true that I complained ouch my back and noticed it was 7.15am. And moved again and winced some more.
Sometime later my partner offered to massage it, and it was true that it was too painful. As the morning wore on I could tell I had put out a rib, maybe. I could tell only maybe because I’ve popped out ribs at least 3 or 4 times in this life and I know exactly the pain you can feel when you breathe. The thing about popped ribs is I have no patience and need them relocated back in because they’re so painful.
I presented. I complimented the Australian physio who put the ribs back in on the other side the last time. It’s true that when he touched my back and said pull here, move there that it was agony. I was surprised the ribs were so high up, I was surprised the ribs were hurting lower down and I was completely shocked when he calculated I had popped out a total of 4 Ribs.
That was what was true about that moment that I had managed to pop out four ribs while being asleep. Scooby Doo indeed. It wasn’t so much the pain, it was that it was so unexpected and the number was so unexpected. 4. Quartered. Like a ransacked piano. No notes, rather than basic ones. In 48 hours the pain will soften and recede, and in 5 days I won’t feel a thing. Now it’s dull, but like the same old note again and again. But I do find the whole episode terribly funny.