in my youth
240427 | Parent-teacher interviews, a neighbour’s lament, and one teen boy's search history.
Raking leaves in late evening.
Reading Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Not smart enough to grasp most of what I’m reading.
After hours rock show at school. There are three bands: Skylab, Baby Seal Club, Big Posy. There’s a merch table and a coat check and the makings of a moshpit. There’s security. There’s a cover of Black Hole Sun: In my youth / I pray to keep / Heaven, send / Hell away. There the parents stand in the dark, hold up phones, flowers wrapped in cellophane. “Fuck,” bellows the frontman, 16. “You don’t know me, no one knows me. Fuhhhhck.”
Buddha lost in the garden, found overturned in the periwinkle, covered by creepers and tendrils.
Soft serviceberry buds, promising to burst. Berry beginnings.
The task: to memorize a poem in 24 hours. Ten lines minimum. C— grips the podium, eyes fixed on the ceiling tiles. “What should we have taken with us?” she murmurs haltingly. “Nothing in our pockets / But a pencil stub, two oranges, / Four Toronto streetcar tickets / and an elastic band / holding a bundle of small white filing cards /
printed with important facts.”1
Chard and black eyed beans. Lemony lentils. Eggplant parm.
L— with the purple hair waves off the line-cutter. “The sooner she leave the better.”
“What’s that?” “A blood orange.” “It looks like blood.” Separate the pith from the deep red flesh; pop slice into mouth, chew. “Blood orange.” Dry.
The vocabulary quiz. Opalescence. Tendril. Desperation. Bargaining.
N— checks his phone at mass. “Put it away.” “No,” he says. “I’m texting my mom. I’m allowed to text my mom.”
Parent teacher interviews. L—‘s parents both in blue. A—‘s parents both A—. The architects. The anxious mother; the nervous daughter. B— works with a tutor. “Robb,” says B—. “It’s Ross,” says mom. Three hours on the cafeteria stool, hard and unsteady. Early summer light on the trees in the park.
Zazen.
A poem from L— to honour Tu Fu, who lived through the An Lu Shan Rebellion.
Asked by more than one student to do the ice bucket challenge. “For mental health.” Refuse.
Drama club cast party. Pizza guy’s delivery: “Bro ain’t no one I’m more afraid of than fifteen to twenty year olds.”
The fight. A mob of girls in the hall, waiting for their target to leave the classroom. Screams: a brawl. Race up the stairwell and enter the fray, try to disperse. She hits his face; he pushes her against the wall, her head connecting with a thud. Goose egg. He slips out of his body, looks in terror at what he’s done. He runs away, breaks into tears, gives his report, apologizes. He’s sent away, told not to return to school for a month.
Connections: too easy for them.
A— follows rabbit holes on his tablet in class. He draws us up a list of his recent searches:
Rhodope Mountains (Bulgaria)
Canada election poll average calculations
Germany Government structure
Tromsø
Global fjord distribution
Vaquita population assessments
Charon (Pluto moon)
Tigers genetic differentiation study (subspecies)
Italy demographic projections
Sunda tiger
Heart of Borneo
Zazen.
The meeting about the fight.
Falafel Tuesday. Two’s too many.
Sunshine warm and glorious. Meet the robin’s eye.
Chat with T—, the octogenarian Greek who lives near the school. Lives here with his 64-year-old son. Has lost his wife, his eldest son. “Found him in the house one day.” He asks my nationality; tell him. He nods, “That’s good.” He laments: “In this country they don’t help you. Should never have left my country. There they help you.” He blinks at the sun; the sky’s bright blue. He dreams of Aprils in Thessaloniki. “Here they don’t help you.”
The talk about the meeting about the fight.
Franciscus dead. In his Easter address ‘to the city and to the world’ (urbi et orbi): “Love has triumphed over hatred, light over darkness and truth over falsehood. Forgiveness has triumphed over revenge. Evil has not disappeared from history; it will remain until the end, but it no longer has the upper hand; it no longer has power over those who accept the grace of this day.
Bicycle repaired again: replaced gear shifter cable thingy.
Please return to ED.
Play-practice: Slow tempo work on the prelude from Bach’s A-minor English suite. Martha Argerich flying through it in 1969.
Visit venue for a party: an old Masonic temple behind the KFC, where a national chess tournament is wrapping up, checking out.
The reflection on the talk about the meeting about the fight.
Two’s too many. Tend the garden. Use fewer words. Build your heart. Sic semper tyrannis. In pace requiescat.
d
Margaret Atwood, ‘Provisions’