Category: Certainties

“The trouble with literature today everybody wants to write it, nobody wants to read it.”

So yes, we’re on the sunny side of the street out here. Very well situated. I don’t know what else to tell you.

“The terrible wound that had opened up in his side and he didn’t know if he was going to make it. He was looking down at the blood running out of him. His mind was still working so he knew he wasn’t actually dead. It had slowed down a bit, this blood. He put his hand on the gaping wound. The blood was coming through the fingers of his hand but only sort of seeping through.  Everything was going to be all right.”

The air is refreshingly cool in the sun. Temperate. Beautiful afternoon. I said that. Back here at the Coastwatchers pub I’ve ordered a bier and a splash of Suntory “Toki” Japanese whisky. Toki = Time. It’s good. Like the Japanese it’s subtle with a great attention to detail.

“Not sure why we’re not connected.”

February 24, 2017. 4:32 pm. The day a continuation of yesterday. Weather-wise entirely acceptable to bolster my theory February is beautiful here.

I think part of what happened is I went a “Toki” too far and discovered another feature, or tasting note, that this is a fairly powerful drink masked by the Japanese passion for delicacy and self-effacement.

“Toki” is a fine, deep yellow and the Japanese passion for degeneracy is nicely masked by a mild, almost innocuous-seeming smoothness. I had two shots and they weren’t overly generous although adequate, and I was already into the Japanese stagger. I don’t much like staggering.  It leaves you with a certain feeling of inadequacy.”

We drove in to the store for pudding because we’re out of dessert. And being out of dessert is like being lost in the desert. Where no dessert is.

Maybe something of an experience once if you survive it. But why take that chance when you don’t have to? Side trip down to the defunct winery to get some rosemary from the abundant bushes around the abandoned Auberge. They called it “The Bistro” and they’re all gone. I like “Auberge”. We can’t remember if the place is for sale or not, the bistro and all those vines planted, what is it, twenty years ago? “Saturna Winery”. They tried they failed.

February 25, 2017. 3:53 pm. It’s been looking like a bit of rain most of the day but the rain hasn’t happened. It’s very quiet here, that’s for sure. 5:19 pm. Time is not my friend, but “Toki” is. Dusk and the wind’s come up a bit.   Just listening to some Schubert lieder. Guy’s famous in these islands.

February 26, 2017. 10:32 am. Up an hour ago after a much better night. Yes, that’s quite right. Feel almost normal. Rained a long time last night and sure, it was kinda nice hearing the rain on the roof.  Raindrops. Pretty little raindrops. Fallin from my eyes.

6:12 pm. Forgot what I was going to say. That’s when you know you’re in “Toki” time again, the time capsule, the fine Japanese whisky. The bottle is going down and you’re going up. Up to the Toki stratosphere and, here again, you’re liking the time you spend with this inscrutable Asian concoction. “Toki” at your retailers now.

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Snow season.  1:57 pm. Still coming down. We go out to have a look at Cliffside Road and meet a neighbour and her dog. They’re from down the road at 116. We agree getting in the car and trying to get to the store isn’t a good idea. She said she’d planned to hit the store too. So we continue ixnayed.

It’s 2:00 pm and it’s coming down now in bigger flakes again. Alright already. We’re talking “Snow Falling on Cedars” here. Did I see the movie? Definitely never read the book. Cute chestnut chickadees at the suet feeder outside the window here. And a hummingbird in a snowstorm at the hummingbird feeder.  Things are really kicking into gear around here. But we’re also stuck.

4:44 pm. These times are real, and time is real. I can feel it.

“If we do that we’ll never get to the bottom of the mysterious island. And that would be too bad. Our brethren couldn’t hack it. They’re here for a reason. They just don’t know what that reason is. And they want to find out. That’s your island right there. So let’s move on from this esoteric stuff and have another discussion about all this weather. Oh, this darned snow.”

5:24 pm. “Who will speak for the fossils? What about them? Don’t they have rights? A fossil in the ground, just because it’s been there for many millions of years, doesn’t make it right. We have to stand up for the fossils because they can’t stand up for themselves. Who is with me on our campaign of hope?”

February 28. 5:05 pm.  We’re getting through time and we’re getting through “Toki”. It’s been good. There’s hardly any left. I’ve enjoyed my week with time. There are but a few desultory sips left in the squared off rectangular glass bottle with the short neck and black plastic screw-top cap. What the Japanese mean by that I’m not sure. It’s different. And I like things that are different.  First it’s ironic then it’s iconic.

“And then, at last, you come to the end of time. You look up and there it is. No mas. It’s been a bloody knuckle fight but it’s over. And we’ve both gained confidence. Or maybe it’s just me.”

 

It’s hot under the volcano.  It’s hot and it’s close and dark and oh, the heat.  But what did you expect?  Why did you come down here?  You were looking for it and you know it.  No complaints now.  If you didn’t want to be under the volcano you wouldn’t be.

“Under the Volcano A Novel by Malcolm Lowry”.  Taken at a “Bantam” book stand in Vancouver by a guy named Jack Lindsay, courtesy of the magnificent City of Vancouver Archives public domain image files.

“Under the Volcano” was published in 1947.  Therefore, counsellor, this image could have been taken no earlier than then.  The book is still in print.  I suffered from Lowry affliction at one time and read everything he wrote and pretty much everything written about him and I’d never seen this image anywhere.  Why ever not?

I seem to recall Malcolm Lowry acknowledging somewhere that his book had sold two copies in Vancouver.  Lowry was a very sick man.  He thought that with a degree from Cambridge, England and a new wife he could live carefree in a tidewater shack out there in Dollarton, North Vancouver, and write death-proof twentieth century novels and stories from about 1940 to 1954, despite being from a wealthy family living near Liverpool, England.  He just had to get away.

The Lowry story is well known, at least to some people.  He wasn’t crazy enough to live out there year round.  There were various apartments, usually in the “West End” here, for the winters.

A precarious existence but some exceptional fiction.  The twentieth century for you.  Now we’re in the sloughs.  Who is going to step up and take the baton from Malcolm Lowry and uphold his standard in the great relay of semi-autobiographical literature?  No one.  That’s what I thought.

Malc, it’s true, was a hard case.  His consort, the beautiful, talented and accomplished Marjorie Bonner Lowry, from California, got quite tired, as I seem to recall, of living in that damn shack. Your husband is supposed to be some crap-hot writer, New York and London published, and you’re squatting in this dump?  “Hey fool, that’s my chipped coffee mug, ya mug, not yours.  Hand it over  Grr…”

It’s the power of b&w acetate and Speed Graphic.

It’s like this one.  Who is this clown?  Who is this masked man?

And one day you wake up and you’re in a new world.  A world where Malcolm Lowry and Eric Nicol both exist.  That’s when you’re back in time again.  Looking for what other things you can drug up.  As they used to say, and perhaps still do, “Not really.”   Upon the 1947 publication of “Sense and Nonsense”.  Never seen this one before either.  First appeared in the extinct “Vancouver Times Herald” newspaper.

Two such profoundly dissimilar writers can scarcely be imagined.  Lowry was a stupendous, irrational and dangerous booze-hound whereas Nicol’s idea of a bender was a small glass of sherry before dinner.  Lowry’s notoriety was almost exclusively posthumous.  He didn’t make 50 and by then he was far from Dollarton.  Nicol’s notoriety was almost entirely extinguished long before his demise at 91.

Lowry had a lane named after him in Dollarton.  It looks like a crowded little narrow street with no place to park these days. Nicol didn’t have a lane named after him.  Nicol wrote 40 books, Lowry, what was it?  Six?  Nicol never doubted his talent.  Neither did Lowry.  But Nicol never thought it would be cool to vacation in a shack.  Cottage all the way.

But they were both good men and true.  Lowry lived like a gypsy all over the place.  He gained readers and scholars long after he wasn’t around. Nicol was a scholar and a family man who stayed put in the same place a long time, the white knight and unassuming sage of Dunbar, Vancouver.

We’ll be right back…

“He strikes me as a Jimmy Swaggert type of character. Uniquely American. The thing’s gonna end in tears. The last thing on his memo pad was “crotch-shots”.

A little further back along the track.  It’s early days.  Fair comment. Should in theory be okay.  Haptic buzz?  Everything’s been max-specced.  It’s like a day in history.

Facebook is encouraging me to update my image.  My first thought is I don’t have an image.  Where else is there to go?  As any red-blooded Italian would say:  Basta!  Enough!

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There’s always this:  “The Man did not appear to hear, but The Warden, typing, still watched him, gauging carefully, making sure it was the peak.  You could not handle this time like the last time.  This was stronger.  This was the last time squared, and you could have to square the strength of your approach, and then if you waited till the other’s peak was past, then logically you would have it made, but was it worth it?  Hell no, it wasn’t worth it, not when you might crimp your own concatenation, what was it to you if some damned son of a bitching stupid fool of an antediluvian got himself beheaded by a progressive world by going around in a dream world and trying to live up to a romantic, backward ideal of individual integrity?  You could go doing things for a jerk like that forever, and never help him any.”

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“A unicorn ridden by a sasquatch.  It’s worse than Washington state.  It’s north of there.”  It’s funny how the book is as good as the movie.  James Jones (1921 – 1977).  From Here To Eternity.  He got the title out of Kipling.  Out of who?

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Feb 14, 2017. 4:30 pm. Calm. Zero precipitation.  Valentine’s Day.  Beautiful.  The rains, as they said they would, have washed away all but all of the snow.  Just some hearty dirty patches here and there. But they’ll never wash away the tears. The tracks of my tears.  Now cut that out.

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And this:

By the hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed
From the Cliff where she lay in the sun,
Fell the Stone
To the Tarn where the daylight is lost;
So she fell from the light of the Sun,
And alone.

Now the fall was ordained from the first,
With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn.
But the Stone
Knows only her life is accursed
As she sinks from the light of the Sun,
And alone.

Oh, Thou Who hast builded the World!
Oh, Thou Who hast lighted the Sun!
Oh, Thou Who hast darkened the Tarn!
Judge Thou
The sin of the Stone that was hurled
By the Goat from the light of the Sun,
As she sinks in the mire of the Tarn,
Even now – even now – even now!

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I know.  It’s tragic.  Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936).  To Be Filed For Reference.  And that is enough of that.

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I don’t know.  There’s just something about getting on that Grandview Highway bus and getting the hell out of here.