Standing room only

For the first time in months, I shiver slightly, and battling my surprise, pull on my fleece jacket.  It's not even Labour Day yet.

I find myself remembering a very chilly morning in late January.  

A lady was standing by the coffee-house window counter, gazing out at the winter drizzle, as I set up my journals at my accustomed table, idly wondering why she'd chosen a spot within six feet of the tables.  

In those mid-pandemic days, the stools had been taken away from the raised counter, because they didn't work well with social distancing, nor with the constant sanitizing then required.  Still, if she wanted to stand at a counter, there was an identical one on the southern side, where, from May 2020 to May 2021, there were no tables at all.

I decided to ignore her, and strolled to the bar to pick up my mocha, and as I was setting it on my table, preparing to take my seat, one of the young baristas approached the lady and gently asked her to move.  She offered her a nearby table, saying something about the need to sanitize.

In response, the standing-room-only lady stalked out.  Clutching her coffee and sandwich, she glared back into the window that faced my table.  I gazed steadily back; she was clearly muttering about the injustice and embarrassment.

I then wondered if she thought I summoned the barista.

Working stiffs

I'm worn out. Here's a photo I snapped at dusk about a year ago. It's a statue of workers, which stands outside the Resident Fan Boy's office building.

Whose hearts are caged by the wage of their lives

A darkish sort of day, as we move deeper into January.  The temperature is dropping and the wind is rising.  This is literal, not a metaphor (but it could be).

Spotify sent me this today.  I like it.  It's like four different poems, read forwards and then backwards, like a tide.  In this days of extreme weather, the first verse seems particularly apt.

The darkness comprehended it not

The tree is down and, along with the decorations, is packed away in the storage locker. (Sure, I miss live trees, but I haven't been able to smell them for the past three Christmases.)

Our cards and lights, however, will remain up until Candlemas. The Resident Fan Boy, making his way home through the heavy January rain in the darkness of just after sunset, told me that he was never happier to see our lights glowing in welcome.

Irrevocable

It's irrevocably January.  I rummaged in the early morning darkness of our study, and caught myself trying to make out the outline of the Christmas tree which isn't there.  Not much later, I stood at the bedroom window and watched the city worker dragging the corpses of our neighbour's tree and our own -- still beautifully shaped and bushy -- to the waiting truck where he pushed a lever and they were sucked out of sight.

Early yesterday morning, I was still in bed when the Resident Fan Boy shuffled in from the bathroom and informed me that David Bowie had died.  Like millions of others, I didn't believe it.  Bowie had been all over the internet; he'd just had a birthday and an album released.  As the news was confirmed, I thought: Well, he'd know how to keep his illness private.  (Evidently, by telling people on a need-to-know basis.  And few people needed to know.)

The day was spent like many others spent it:  elder daughter got a Bowie playlist off Spotify and, being a millennial, downloaded Labyrinth to watch on her laptop in her bedroom.  I resorted to YouTube, because I don't actually own any Bowie albums; I liked his music, but not enough to purchase it.  I was therefore astonished at how sad I felt. I suppose it really hit me yesterday how ubiquitous Bowie was:  his music was everywhere, his influence was pervasive.  If you look at any rundown of his long career -- and those were all over the news -- you see a long stretch of collaborations that put him into close contact with most of the successful rock musicians of the past forty years.

However, he's also etched into the memories of those of us who will never be famous.  I remember classmates dressing like him, I attended countless wedding receptions blaring "Modern Love", saw television shows based on his songs.  One of the first YouTube videos I sought out was "Suffragette City", a favourite dance tune at the "SUB Pub", in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria.

I've always been a bit of a rule-follower, so I felt a rebellious thrill in shouting out "AAaaaaaaw.....WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM!" (The blond dancer is none other than Montreal's own Louise Lecavalier of LA LA LA Human Steps - Eduard Lock choreographed this particular 1990 tour.)

I looked up another one of my favourite Bowie songs. This is "Blue Jeans" from the comical short film "Jazzin' for Blue Jeans" - in which Bowie plays a loser called Vic trying to impress a pretty girl by taking her to see a drug-addled rock star named Screaming Lord Byron -- also played by Bowie.

The 20-minute film from which this is taken is mildly amusing, but it's fun to watch Bowie take pot-shots at himself.

However, I liked Bowie best in collaboration. After Freddy Mercury's death, an epic memorial concert was held for him at Wembley Stadium on Easter Monday, April 20th, 1992 - this was three days before elder daughter was born. Heavily pregnant, I watched tributes from Extreme and Lisa Stansfield - yes, I know.

The whole atmosphere of the concert changed when Bowie took over for his segment, which started with "Under Pressure", which he had written and recorded with Queen in 1981. This is Bowie's performance with Annie Lennox. It nearly blew me off the bed; I can't imagine what it was like to have been there.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the Wembley audience recreating Mercury's scat-singing perfectly.

Elder daughter, in utero, must have wondered what the noise was when I saw Ian Hunter taking the stage next. I'm a massive Mott the Hoople fan, even when not nearly nine months pregnant, and I understand that Joe Elliot and Phil Collen of Def Leppard are as well. You can see them singing back-up to "All the Young Dudes" (written by Bowie and Mott's greatest hit), and looking as if they were the ones who had died and gone to heaven. Playing guitar is Mick Ronson, a musician strongly associated with with both Bowie and Hunter. A little over a year later, he would be dead of liver cancer, which is what eventually killed Bowie himself.

If you've taken the opportunity to watch the whole video, you'll see that Bowie finished the set with another of my favourites, "Heroes". Looking back nearly 24 years, I wondered how his sudden kneeling to recite the Lord's Prayer would have been received by the largely atheistic London audience of today, even when delivered by the likes of Bowie.

Bowie sang of heaven in his final video "Lazarus", which is being described in the press and online as a "final gift to his fans". I don't know about that; it looks more like something Bowie was working through for himself, using his art as a palliative. I was far more spooked by the haunting ten minutes of "Blackstar", which starts with the remains of an astronaut who could be Major Tom of "Space Oddity" from 1970, and moves through images of shaking suffering interspersed with a sort of "Rites of Spring" dancing. At the 4:45 mark, the song shifts into a tune that is more identifiable as a Bowie song, and we see three scarecrows who resemble Jesus and the two thieves at Golgotha (which is supposed to mean "place of the skull").

Mesmerized and disturbed by the images, I was startled when it all faded away. Rather like Bowie himself.

It's a bleak way to begin the new year, but here in Hades, January is always bleak. Perhaps it is better to follow David Bowie's example. Hold on to what is yours, even if that something is pain and suffering - keep it private and precious, and share it only with those closest to you.

Then, make it as beautiful as you can and share it with the world.

A scent of January (write of passage number thirty-five)

Younger daughter has the day off school because of mid-terms, but her voice lesson goes on as usual. So about three o'clock on one of the colder afternoons this month - which has been the majority of them - we hurry out to our bus stop.  The sun, which has been clinging to the horizon for most of the day, is smack in my eyes.

Dazzled, we find seats.  I've just got warm enough to remove my hat and gloves when a tall girl boards the bus somewhere in Lowertown. Her dark brown hair with wavy strands of gold emerge from beneath her toque and blend with the faux fur of her hood. She lowers herself into the seat ahead of me and I feel a cool halo; a frosty fragrance brushes my cheeks and forehead, before it slowly warms and fades.

The pendulum is the pits

When January began, we were still in the midst of the twelve days of Christmas.  The snow people made by neighbourhood children grew under layers of new snow.  I can't ever remember snowmen lasting beyond a day or two.  These lasted for weeks.  However, the pitiless pendulum of the new year has been swinging back and forth between piles of white, and pewter freezing rain.

Last week, I carefully picked my way around the slick streaks and solid slippery puddles along Iris Crescent and saw that the cheerful and slightly askance couple who seemed to be cautiously watching to see what the Accent Snob would do last month had been reduced to emaciated pillars this month.

The pendulum swung again, and a truck-cum-snow-plough was trapped on Bertrand Street one Saturday evening.  Someone had drawn a triumphant smile in the blade-devouring drift.

This week, we've had hip-high hills of white washed away (nearly) by rain which was dried (nearly) by howling winds this morning before the temperatures dropped, freezing treacherous smears across the sidewalks.  And we've still got February to come.  March and April usually aren't that much better here in Hades.

This is my tenth NaBloPoMo.  I began with February 2009, followed by September that same year. In 2010,  I did March, August, and November. I blogged for the whole months of April and October in 2011, and my NaBloPo-months for 2012 were May and July.  For almost each month in which I've participated, I've gone through my diaries to see what patterns emerged over my years of journalling.  Looking over past Januarys was rather depressing.  It's such a damn dark month, mostly in various hues of grey.  I seem to have had rather more friends die in January than other times of the year, but I don't feel like checking, thank-you very much.  I suppose January has usually been a time for facing reality for me.  Too bad the light is so poor.

 I plan to NaBloPoMo in June.  I'll still be blogging in the meantime, but not nearly as regularly. I'm tired, and there are things that need doing before I come out swinging again.

Through a bus, darkly (Write of passage number twenty-eight)

This is a January story, but not of this January. One of the reasons I do NaBloPoMo is to force myself to do posts I always meant to do. Last January, from what I can dimly and reluctantly recall, was a blur of grey slush and pewter-coloured ice. It was a late Wednesday afternoon, and a cold downpour had not quite succeeded in washing the snow from the streets. On Elgin, a water pipe had burst. I took younger daughter to a coffee shop we had loved when we first came to Hades, where the staff was now sullen and unwelcoming. (It has since closed down.)

After dropping her off at her voice lesson, I transferred outside the Rideau Centre with a queue of fellow passengers who barely restrained themselves from shoving each other on to a crowded bus. It was my custom to sit further back, but this evening all seats in the back were already occupied and I reluctantly took one of the "courtesy seats" which face the sideways seats at the front.

I had to step around a young mother in a hijab who, after trying to peer through the mud-caked windows into the gathering darkness, suddenly realized she had to get her stroller off the bus, which meant pushing through crowds of damp and crabby people still trying to board. I caught the eye of a woman sitting across the aisle, smiled and said: "I don't think she knew where she was." The woman seemed to think I was making a criticism, and earnestly explained that it wasn't the mother's fault. Before I could reply that this was what I meant, we were blocked by a wall of standing passengers.

An older lady sitting cater-corner to me in the sideways seat took this as a cue to chat with me. Now, I had caught something from younger daughter just at that Christmas. It was four weeks later and whatever it was had worked its way from my head into my chest, then up into my sinuses and into my ears so that now I was rather hard of hearing. (It would not clear up until mid-February.) I was too cold, wet, and tired to explain this to the lady, and wished I had donned my ear-buds. I smiled and nodded, not being able to make out what she was saying. It didn't take me long to realize that this tactic had been a big mistake. She kept chatting in a low, companionable tone until we turned off Dalhousie on to Murray Street. It was at this point that a formidable lady in an African headdress planted herself between us, and in deep mellifluous tones started to tell us off.

This meant five minutes of my looking in bewilderment between the two women, wondering what on earth I'd missed. Chatty lady chuckled disbelievingly at formidable lady, who then turned to me and seemed to ask what I had to say. I could only manage: "I'm afraid I can't hear you."
"Well, isn't that good for you?" she said, before sailing to the back of the bus, which was now largely empty, flinging back: "I am not your cleaning lady...."

I wondered briefly if we were enacting a scene from the film The Help which was big at that time and which, of course, I hadn't seen. Chatty lady gave me a "Can you believe that?" sort of look, along with a comment that I still couldn't hear, and I staggered off the bus, resolving never to pretend I can hear when I can't and to always try to sit near the back of the bus.

I realize at some point I'll be really old (and undoubtedly deaf as a post) and will have no choice but to sit at the front, but I'll cross that bus when I come to it.