A respite from our Postmodern anxiety, occasionally I require a few recollections from a simpler past, anecdotes like these inherited from my grandparents, Ray and Louise, at the Arnholt Place, down in the Danville holler, sometime in the 30s.
Through a hole cut in the floor for heat, three brothers, my father, Dan, and uncles, Stanton and Wayne, scrawny little boys all in one bed and quarantined for measles, took turns peering from the upstairs to the downstairs. After a great commotion, Grandma Frye called up, “Meet your new baby sister.” Aunt Jane, red-faced, more from first breaths than bashfulness, looked up to them.
A few years earlier or later, Blubaugh cousins from Canton stopped by the farm on a Sunday drive. Finding no one home, all in good fun, they switched all the upstairs beds and dressers with all the downstairs chairs and tables. It didn’t take long as Ray and Louise owned nothing but each other, hard work, back taxes and a few sticks of furniture.
Downstairs in the kitchen, on most Saturday nights, Ray and Louise played Euchre with Ed and Sally Styers, hour after hour, for “Drink or Smell.” If you won a hand, you drank Granddad’s hard cider. If you lost, you only smelled the glass. Too much winning and cider would ensure your losing again.
Badminton
Reality collided with fantasy when I was five or six or seven. I was the oldest and for a while the only grandchild. In this account, do consider that there was a new cousin, Jimmy, on the scene who seemed to be getting far too much attention for a tedious baby. The transgression occurred at a picnic on the Gambier farm, maybe Mothers’ Day, between Sunday dinner, home-churned ice cream and the evening milking chores. Grandma, the center of all my love (And, of course, I was the object of all her doting.), sat on the front stoop watching the young couples play badminton.
With a racquet, I thwacked her on her head. (There it is; there’s no denying it now.) At the time, this seemed a perfectly reasonable attempt at play. On our new color TV, in Saturday morning cartoons, this violence was customary etiquette, a harmless greeting set to zany music. “Hello there! Good day to you, sir. A pleasure to meet you, Miss.” The racquet would be demolished; however, magically, not the noggin. Occasionally, lumps appeared, but these were efficiently tapped down with a mallet that all the characters carried for just such events. Each recipient got right back up again with a witty retort. Animated conversations continued unabated and without consequence.
Uncles helped Grandma to the couch. I recall an excessive amount of unnecessary yelling. I presume, at some point, I cried, though I was puzzled, confused over inquiries as to the why. In my first formal apology, even so small, I was acutely aware that my future within the family hinged upon an Act of Contrition. (I was new to the confessional, but I realized what transpired also had the potential of sin and so demanded a detailed explanation for Father Fortkamp as well an inordinate assignment of Our Fathers or Hail Marys. I had not fully memorized the longer Apostles Creed and dreaded this possibility.) Years later, an aunt informed me: apparently, there was a trip to Mercy Hospital and thirteen stitches.
I remember the Winter of 2011 when a group of local poets visited Bernadette Mayer at her home in Nassau.
I remember how cold it was.
I remember the only heating source in the converted open school house living room was a pot belly stove.
I remember thinking no one had cooler anecdotes of New York City poets from the sixties and seventies than Bernadette did.
I remember she spoke of her friend Joe Brainerd’s book I Remember.
I remember the deserted St Croix, Virgin Island beach my mother and I used to visit when we lived on the island.
I remember how I felt when I heard The Rockefellers were going to build a resort hotel on the site.
I remember thinking that Ferlinghetti was going to live forever.
I remember thinking I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I remember watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play the New York Giants on the first TV we ever owned.
I remember having the mumps and my cousin coming over from next door to make sure I got chicken pox also.
I remember seeing every prewar western every made.
I remember seeing hundreds of noir classics.
I remember seeing King Kong eleven times in one week on The Million Dollar movie.
I remember my cousin saw it thirteen times.
I remember watching the Joe McCarthy House of Unamerican Activities hearing live on TV and, while I didn’t know what they were all about, not really, I thought McCarthy was a bully and a dick.
I remember my mother hiding a copy of Tropic of Cancer in her secret desk drawer and sneaking looks at it when she was at work.
I remember not getting what he was writing about but that it was dirty.
I remember she had a copy of This Is My Beloved also but she didn’t hide that book away.
I remember reading that all the way through when I was like ten and thinking the fireworks he described were pretty cool.
I remember how cool the black and white the fireworks display at the beginning of Manhattan
was the first time I saw it.
I remember that one of my cocktail waitress saying she saw the movie and it sucked.
I remember she said “…and it wasn’t even in color.”
I remember knowing how to read when I entered first grade at the Catholic school in Christiansted.
I remember I was the only one who could read in first grade and how much the nuns loved me.
I remember how it felt to be the only non-Catholic in Catholic school.
I remember the first time I read, I Remember.
I remember the baseball game in 1965 I took my girlfriend to see.
I remember there was a centerfield to home to second base triple play in that gam and how she said, “That was a nice play.”
I remember that was the first time it had ever happened in a major league baseball game and it has only happened one more time since.
I remember I still loved her anyway no matter how unimpressed she was.
I remember the first major league game I took our kids too and missing three innings when Jose Cruz hit me on the cheekbone with a high foul ball while I was yelling, “I got it, I got it.”
I remember I would have been blind in my right eye if I had been wearing my glasses.
I remember they wanted me to go to Flushing General.
I remember a nurse telling me once if you have a choice between going to Flushing General or Bronx General and dying, die.
I remember burning my hand when I accidently hit my hand on the pot belly stove that Bernadette asking me to stoke.
I remember it hurt for weeks after.
I remember reading the memoir of Pasternak, I Remember.”
I remember seeing selections from Roman Vishniac’s, A Vanished World, at the State Museum of New York at Albany and crying.
I remember reading poetry at the reading Against the End of the World just down the block from the State Museum.
I remember seeing an exhibition on the Atomic Bomb age at the museum and seeing my first Laurie Anderson work for art, “The Singing Brick.”
I remember writing a poem against the end of the world called the Singing Brick.
I remember it was in a musically themed, against the end of the world book of poems called, Stop Making Sense.
I remember the first poem I ever published in sixth grade, in the mimeo class reader, The Fledgling.
I remember the poem was a pastiche of the song Old Dan Tucker.
I remember duck and cover drills in Centre Avenue Elementary School.
I remember how stupid they were given how close we were to New York City and how many huge glass windows there were in all the classrooms.
I remember the poem I published in the group photo/poem book commemorating our trip to Bernadette’s house.
I remember the title of my poem was, “Emergency Drills, Centre Avenue Elementary School, East Rockaway, N.Y, 1958.”
I remember the first time I saw Throne of Blood in grad school.
I remember the first time I saw Hiroshima Mon Amour in grad school.
I remember the first time I saw the Japanese movie, After Life.
I remember seeing four Brooklyn Dodgers home runs in a row.
I remember we didn’t get the foul ball that Jose Cruz hit me with.
I remember torrential rain on a tin roof on St Croix.
I remember playing spin the bottle and never being kissed.
I remember the high school psychologist telling me I should practice Rorschach inkblots so I could take her test.
I remember refusing to take the test because I thought it was stupid and I didn’t see anything suggestive in those blots.
I remember her telling me I second guessed myself all the time.
I remember her telling me I should trust my instincts because my first thoguht was almost always the right.
I remember how useful an observation that turned out to be.
I remember every two weeks for three years in the nightclub trying to guess which of the new band members was the drummer.
I remember I was only wrong once.
I remember thee guessing game as a process of elimination until you found the crazy one; he would be the drummer.
I remember seeing my first Bergman movie.
I remember seeing Last Year at Marienbad three time in four days in grad school.
I remember not paying attention in my first psychology class lesson in college on the Stanford Binet test.
I remember the teacher trying to make an example of me by giving me the block test graduating in difficulty as the numbers increased starting at six of ten.
I remember I did six, seven, eight and nine as fast as she could put them in front of me.
I remember how stunned she was.
I remember not mentioning having taken that test less the three years ago along with every other test they had on offer.
I remember the summer I first heard Leonard Cohen’s song, Suzanne.
I remember seeing the photo exhibit Requiem by the photographers killed in Vietnam at the Eastman House not long before 9-11.
I remember that exhibits was as quiet as a funeral and all the people who were crying at it.
I remember it was how I felt when I finally got to see The Wall in DC.
John P. Portelli is a Maltese-Canadian poet and fiction author, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. Besides 11 academic books he has published 10 poetry collections, 2 collections of short stories, and a novel. His literary work has been translated into English, Italian, French, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Romanian, and Spanish. His collection Here Was was short-listed for the 2024 Canadian Book Club Award. He lives between Malta and Toronto.
1. Please share your thoughts about the future of literature.
For me literature is an essential part of being human. Its future? I am not a fortune teller! But I am afraid that the ultra capitalist and individualist mentality of our present way of living, to me, does not augur well for a healthy future for literature. For example, it is getting even harder to sell poetry books, and publishers are feeling in the pinch. But there will always continue to be literary authors. Whether they will be appreciated is another story.
2. When did you start writing?
I started writing poetry when I was 16 years old. My initial interest was in poetry and essays.
3 . The Good and the Bad. Who is winning nowadays?
It depends in which area of life? In general, however, I think we are on the verge of a new fascist period in the West. When I read authors like John Dewey and Bertrand Russell who wrote about the conditions in the West in the 1930s, unfortunately I see lots and lots of similarities to what is happening today. Unless you are part of the dominant conservative “culture” people are marginalised. Colonialism is still alive and strong! God help us.
4. How many books have you written and where can we find your books?
I have written 11 academic books, 10 collections of poetry (some published in translations), 2 collections of short-stories, and a novel. Some of my work is available from Amazon, others from Horizons Publishers in Malta and Word and Deed Publishers in Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
4. The book. E books or hardcopies of books. What will be the future?
I think some people will still prefer hard copies of books. Given my weak eyesight, I prefer hard copies. But more and more people are used to reading on line. For me, as long as people read, that is fine.
5. A wish for 2025?
True and lasting peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians do not deserve what they have been going through since 1948! And this wish does not mean I support Hamas.
6. A phrase from your book or a book you like?
“The opposite of a civilised society is a creative one”. Albert Camus from his essay “Summer in Algiers”.
7. Recent and future publications?
In 2024 I have edited a collection of poetry in Maltese on Gaza. And also I published a collection of poems with Ahmed Miqdad, a poet from Gaza. The profits from the sale of these two books have been donated to Gaza. I am now also editing a collection of poems in English by international poems on Gaza and Palestine. Again, the money from the sales of this collection will be donated to Gaza. The book will be published later this year by Horizons in Malta and Daraja Press in Quebec.
Thank you so much.. …. EVA Petropoulou Lianou Author Poet Greece
Some people say that mathematics is a difficult subject, while others find it boring. However, in reality, mathematics gives us hope that there are solutions to problems in life, just like the examples in mathematics. I also have to say that mathematics is the greatest motivator for people because the numbers in mathematics start from 0 and go to infinity.
To those who say mathematics is difficult, I would recommend that they try to engage with this subject a little more sincerely. Some young children may struggle to learn mathematics because of textbooks. For example, in elementary school, it is taught that a smaller number cannot be subtracted from a large one. However, in higher grades, it is taught that a smaller number can be subtracted from a large one, but the result will be negative.
Moreover, we can say that some current textbooks are also becoming complex. I find that some mathematical topics and examples reflect human interpretations. Parallel lines never intersect, and in this, I see people who, no matter how many hours, months, or years pass, will never be together. Tangent curves, on the other hand, intersect only once and then part ways for life paths as if nothing had happened. In solving trigonometric equations and inequations, we are given an interval, within that range and discard the unnecessary ones. I compare this to making decisions in life.
However, our faces, fingers, hands, feet, and body structure -all of these are based on the “golden ratio”. The golden ratio is not typically covered in textbooks, but I will explain it briefly and simply. If you pay attention, you`ll notice that people tend to sit not in the exact center or the very edge of a bench, but somewhere between the center and the edge. This is the first example of the golden ratio. Another example is your face: if you observe closely, the distance between your nose and eyes your eyebrows and eyes, and the length between your two eyes, and the length between your two eyes are all proportional to the golden ratio. In general, I can say that life is mathematics, and even the simple things in our lives are mathematics.
He loved dogs, but he didn’t want to deal with the responsibility of owning one, on top of which the concept of “owning” an animal made him uncomfortable. But he’d always stop to pet a friendly dog on the street or in a shop, and he’d jump at the chance to board a traveling friend’s dog for a few days, even weeks.
His wife was somewhat indifferent to dogs, but she always welcomed the temporary visitor, as long as he did the feeding and walking. She was even happy to steal the occasional stomach pat, or to receive a brief lick.
The friend’s dog, a medium-sized male of unknown lineage, was called Winslow. The friend referred to it as That Winslow Boy whenever it did something naughty.
He was walking Winslow one morning when a passing neighbor said, “Oh, got yourself a dog?”
“Just for a couple of weeks,” he said. “I’m caring for him while his owner is in Madagascar.” He regretted having said “owner.”
“Oh, Madagascar, marvelous!” the neighbor exclaimed, and went on to tell him, in voluminous detail, about her own trip to Madagascar the year before.
Hard Times
He received a phone call, out of the blue, from a childhood friend he hadn’t seen or spoken to in decades. This friend had fallen on hard times and was “reaching out” to his old buddies.
He had fond memories of the guy and did want to help, so he asked, “How can I help?”
“I could use a place to stay,” the friend said.
Oh, no, that was out of the question. Not only would his wife never stand for it, neither would he.
“I’d love to help, but we don’t have the space,” he told the friend.
“I understand,” the friend said. There was a pregnant pause and then the friend said, sheepishly, “Maybe you could help me out with a little money for a motel?”
Should he suggest the friend find a shelter, or would that be an insult? Sure he could afford to give his friend a few hundred bucks, but what happens when that runs out? What about the long term?
He told the old friend to meet him at an ATM downtown. He withdrew $500 and handed the cash to the friend.
“Thanks, this means a lot to me,” the friend said.
He was about to say, “Any time,” then he caught himself and said, “Sure.”
Endgame
Before he met his wife, in a college course on postwar European drama, where they bonded over Beckett’s Endgame, he was dating a girl named Josie, but there had been no real spark; apparently the feeling was mutual, because when he told Josie he’d met someone new, she said, simply, “OK.”
That was thirty years ago. He and his wife had not discussed Beckett for the past twenty of them. Like most marriages.
