HUMAN WRECKAGE

Gimme Some Peace

During my teenage years, that curiously stunted era of developing into some sort of being vaguely resembling an adult, all my mother ever said to me was, “TURN IT DOWN!” I resolved that I’d never devolve into a psychotic crank like Mom. Just who in their right mind would prefer Julio Inglesias and Engelbert Humperdinck over Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer? Contemporary living has been a stern tutor, teaching the tyranny of noise - however one may define cacophony. My stereo and Mom’s yelling aside, the seventies, in retrospect, were a much quieter time.

Generally, the ceaseless urban roar is an artificial construct. My neighbourhood, like most, is transitioning; the din is dense. The City of Edmonton actively encourages population density in order to increase its tax base. Basic, essential services are expensive. For example, the City did not spray for mosquitoes last spring. That pesty saving to the municipal budget ranged from a quarter- to a half-million dollars. My ward’s alderman bet his seat on bats and dragonflies. Additional federal and provincial funds literally just drip down into this developers’ paradise, more of a trickle would be welcome. Single homes are demolished so two may take their place. The grinding engines of heavy trucks and heavy machinery are constant. The paradox of progress is more motors and municipal expense as ageing infrastructure is upgraded to accommodate increased volume (pardon the pun).

A casual chat with the neighbourhood community league president the other Saturday was especially disheartening. He figured the noise of transition was sustainable for another decade, at least. I thought, “Great, fanfare enough to see me out.” Variations on these strident, gratingly harsh sounds are everywhere now too, aren’t they? Alarming news, angry punditry, mad social commentary, politicians talking up to the lowest common denominator, a myopic world screaming to be heard; my God, what some people shout about when they use their cells as walkie-talkies - hire a lawyer, sell the stock or get a prescription, I don’t care to know one way or the other, just stuff a sock in it (and your anxious little dog too).

Edmonton had been hit a violent storm one evening about a week's previous. The type I’d expect in July or August, heat generated and frightening. The window blinds were up and so the various rooms of the Crooked 9 flashed electric blue, the colour of vacuum tube television screens. Thunder cracked like dominoes tiles on an oak table. Double-down slams! Nature’s noise was real and welcome, a refreshingly glorious star cameo.

The shrill background whine to modern life is omnipresent. The noise, beyond the freeways’ roar and emergency sirens, is visual too. Cities are not assembled Lego kits, out of the box and done. Ta-da! Rome was not built in two millennia. My town has proved particularly adept at botching its footprint on both sides of the North Saskatchewan River. Commercial architecture is boring and repetitive, newer low-rise buildings look cheap. Boulevards and planters are weedy and infrequently manicured because maintenance costs money. Bridge refurbishments and light rail line extensions are better really, really late then never and so the city’s primary colour is a sort of Halloween orange: traffic cones and pylons, striping on barriers and safety vests, detour and reduced speed limit signs. Pyramids of fill, gravel, sand, clog narrow streets. And there is litter, there is always litter; a recent informal survey indicates that disposable masks rival some of Canada’s most beloved corporate brands underfoot. Can I buy one thing, just one thing, without a logo on it?

I’m unsure when I decided that pretty much everything around me disturbed my peace. I can’t pinpoint exactly when life got louder. Audio annoyance must be a function of ageing. Mary Reilly, Mary Reilly, I have become my mother; but not, you know, in the Psycho sense, just more irritable. And poor Mom, if she only knew that the discordant chords of the Clash and the Sex Pistols would now register to her ears as sounds sweeter than birdsong.

I wish our recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II had been schizophrenic because everyone and everything would’ve had to shut the fuck up for a second blessed minute.    

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of cranky complaint since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format. 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Queen Elizabeth II, 1926 - 2022

“I’m the best thing England’s got, me and the Queen.” – Mick Jagger, circa 1977

Canada’s parliamentary democracy is based on the Westminster System. Protocol necessarily involves ritual and tradition. When the House of Commons sits, each day’s session begins with the placing of a mace on the table before the speaker of the House. The same ceremony plays out in the Senate and in provincial and territorial legislative assemblies. The stylized weapon symbolizes the authority of the British Crown while crucially conceding that its power has been ceded to the people.

I like living under a constitutional monarchy. The reigning sovereign as represented by their vice-regal surrogate, our Governor-General, is our head of state. Our prime minister heads the government. I took journalism in university. Thought maybe I’d be a newshound. I ended up a news junkie in advertising. In recent years I’ve read about democracies, some established, some nascent, unraveling. I’ve come to appreciate Canada’s creaky colonial model. That subtle layer between entities, the nature of the state versus the nature of its executive is a crucial buffer. There is decorum and stability up here north of 49, imperfect as any human construct, surely, but in Canada, it’s impossible for an “elected” head of “state” to actively sabotage the peaceful transfer of power.

The Crown is similar to a kitchen wall calendar, a little old fashioned but unfailingly reliable. For the past 70 years (eight years longer then I’ve been alive) the face of this Canadian calm carrying on was Queen Elizabeth II. I’ve devoted more thought to this archaic and dubious institution, its lasting impact, importance, meaning and place in history, then I have to the throne’s lottery winners and members of the Royal Family. They are separate yet the same. Still, I believe the late Queen recognized the blind luck of her birth and possessed the fortitude to make the best of an unwanted gift of fate.

When I picture the late Queen, it’s her classic, primary portrait, young, attractive and defaced by the Sex Pistols. I wonder if that “God Save the Queen” sleeve was another “Oh, fuck!” moment, a coughed regal giggle behind a daintily clenched fist. An icon to iconoclasts. Canadian pop artist Charles Pachter had already lampooned her in his painting “Queen on Moose.” Warhol had rendered her hipper than thou, Marilyn and Mao. After the Stones had her bravely shouting “What the hell is going on?” in “Jigsaw Puzzle” she was the subject of a lovelorn, throwaway Beatles ditty.

I took for granted that Queen Elizabeth II would outlive me. Maybe there was something in the water of the River Thames or perhaps she shared some sort of alien genetic material with Keith Richards. The Queen wasn’t just the Monarch, she was the entire monarchy, existing for centuries past, weirdly immortal.

Seventy years of human history from an elevated perch. Witness to and part-time player in change and turmoil, triumph and tragedy in the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, Europe and the rest of the world. She spent some time in the dock too, a complicit figurehead for every single crime ever committed in the name of the British Empire. Closer to home, “Buck House” or Balmoral, the hot mic wit and wisdom of her toff husband the antics of her own family, her idiotic children and grandchildren, and their insufferable partners. I wonder if Her Majesty ever contemplated writing her memoirs. I’m somewhat charmed by an irrational fantasy, my hope her working title might’ve been something like Oh, Fuck! What Now?

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of breathless Royals coverage since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format. 

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Before the Fall

The Rolling Stones have released something like 20 live albums since Ann last taught music in Edmonton’s public system (of course I bought them). “Back to school” for me was an annual advertising theme, tired, difficult to keep fresh. “Back to school” for Ann remains the start of a new year; old triggers still fire.

Ann’s orchestra is gearing up for what its members hope will be a proper season in the wake of two years of pandemic confusion. Stats Guy and I are musing about reviving the Tuesday Night Beer Club because who hasn’t longed for sub-pub, par-for-the-main-course-your-choice-of-two-sides grub, disgusting toilets and televised sports? Covid’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

September arrived hotter than July. I ceased my bread baking operations while reminding myself to have the furnace inspected; funny, some types of heat are better than others. The Crooked 9’s lawn was crispy underfoot, no point cutting short straws. My axiom of 12 mows between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving will prove false this year. Coincidentally, those holidays now bracket the extended wildfire season in western Canada. Distant fires change the colour and composition of the sky, sunbeams crashed on the ground register more orange than yellow or white, and orange should only be smelled as fresh fruit, fresh ink or fresh paint, not smoky like paprika.

Our weather has since settled into more seasonal norms. Mornings on the front porch with coffee, cigarettes and the newspaper now require an upper layer of flannel or fleece. The sun’s a little lower in the sky. Ann has begun cutting back some of the perennials in her garden. The arborist has visited to prune the birches, the crabs, the buckeye, the mountain ash and the giant lilac bush; the dead and distressed are best revealed through the camouflage of verdant foliage. Ann’s patio flowerpots and hanging baskets are still thriving albeit ripe for the taking by the first overnight frost.

I have started work on another novel. Its premise is universal boomer, an old folks’ home as high school or university dorm living. What could possibly go awry should a man like me with his addictions and Rolling Stones records move into a seniors’ residence? I won’t want to play canasta. I won’t want to watch The Sound of Music on movie night. Fuck chair zumba. My trouble with long form storytelling is that after writing the beginning, I find I require a middle and an end; winter’s promise is time to plot.

Bob Dylan once said, “Nostalgia is death.” On that note, Ann and I will spend a portion of the Thanksgiving long weekend in Montreal. We are hopeful the city’s maple leaves will have turned red by then; a vivid display of a season’s end just for us, summer gone. I wish to attend my 45th high school reunion. Time has recast hell in a better light, a rosier hue. Ann, wisely, will take a pass on spending time with the old boys; ironically, I’ve not kept in touch with the vast majority of my graduating cohort. But back in my old school I won’t have braces on my teeth anymore, my complexion will be sort of clear; my body remains fairly trim if a tad heavier, an additional inch around my waist. Most of my hair remains, each single strand thinner and greyer. I intend to say hello and trawl incidental material for my manuscript. And I do hope a fellow whom I’ve not seen since 1977 will turn up insisting that the Faces are still better than the Stones. Then again, maybe he’s all grown up now.        

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of casual bus stop weather conversation since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format.