The Breakup Suite, by Trevor Abes — Poetry Review

19 Monday Apr 2021

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The series of poems contained in Abes’ beautiful collection is almost too raw emotionally to be judged fairly in aesthetic terms, yet the language is undeniable. The Breakup Suite is about exactly what it sounds like.

You seldom ever see someone else at their lowest emotional moment, fresh after a breakup of a 5-year relationship, and if somehow you do, you don’t expect it to be written about at all, let alone like this. You expect the person to be a fucking mess, yet the outpouring of a heart here is graceful, measured, balanced, contained.

The poems are as much a triumph of spirit and resolve as of language. The love of writing is as palpable as Abes’ love for “E.”

I felt like, for Abes to move on in life, the sentence and the sentiment had to be pitch perfect. Working out his own feelings and expressing them just so was the same act.

Which writer said, “I write so that I know what I think.” Whereas poets and writers may sometimes select frivolous subjects or go on sentimental trips, the stakes here are high. Abes writes poems where another person may go on a bender, with the same level of sobriety and reflection that the debauchee invests into getting drunk. He’s responding to devastation by trying to master his emotions, not get conquered by them.

The result is poetry that documents the collapsing of a shared rich, complex, loving inner world without any such collapse in the poems. That these poems can face the onslaught of raw emotion like this and endure suggests the poet can, too.

Talking about the actual breakup feels like I’m cheapening out on the language, which is continually impressive. The love felt is inspiring, even if it’s over now. The poems come almost as a secondary accomplishment, like, they’re great, but, holy shit, this poet really knows how to love someone and live life!

Abes says in the intro that maybe these poems could help someone else who is reeling after a breakup, but the world of love he describes is, well, lovely. That it was written during COVID is incidental in a sense. It mattered to the couple in their lives, not to the poems per se.

“The number of hours I’ve spent worrying
About whether or not I’d ever be able to ignore your Facebook and
Instagram to get a taste of the life we had even though it stirred my guts
to tears…
It’s not embarrassing so much as evidence of how I loved you big enough
To not take insurance out on us…”
-Excerpt from When Hope Returns

The language is precise but modern and matter of fact, not overblown ornate Poetry. It’s honest and unassuming. Sensitive, but tough, and even muscular in its sensitivity. If being raw and vulnerable, open and honest at your deepest point, is a tough form of modern masculinity, The Breakup Suite lays a blueprint.

These poems contain a slice of love as charged as you’re likely to find, and, despite Abes’ contention it may only be suitable for people fresh off a breakup (“poetry for the dumped”), these are simply very moving poems. In the way you can listen to the blues even if you woke up this morning and all you had was not gone, anyone can and should read these poems.

Writing them was a courageous act.

If you’d like to read The Breakup Suite, please email transfer $10 to Trevor (trevorstevenabes @ gmail dot com) and he’ll send you the PDF, or you can order a copy of the physical book from Amazon.

Disclosure: Trevor and I briefly worked for the same company in 2019. We’ve met exactly once, at a staff party. I describe the extent of our relationship because a review this positive may sound like sponsored content. It’s not! Only, had we not worked together, I wouldn’t have found his poetry.

Ode to My Grateful Dead T-Shirts

01 Thursday Aug 2019

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Bootleg Ts, Dead shirts, Grateful Dead T-shirts, Jerry Garcia

Looking through pictures from overnight summer camp a while ago really made me miss, of all things, my old Dead t-shirts. I wore a dead t-shirt consecutively every day between 1997-2000.

Bootleg Grateful Dead t-shirt culture has been written about at large. In my day I competed against CWP counselors for who had the coolest Jerry shit and the best tapes. I held my own.

Today is August 1, Jerry’s Bday: happy birthday, big guy! Love you forever! In honour of it I’d like to catalogue My Dead Ts for posterity, with pictures where possible.

“Space Your Face”—First Dead T, acquired in 1994. Standard Dead Skeleton with cool space shit inside it. This is me and my younger bro. This pic shows how long I’ve been in the game!

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2. “You know our love will not fade away”—Silhouette of Jerry’s face with lyrics from Not Fade Away on the back. Purchased in Vermont by my parents on a trip in ’95 or ’96.

3. “Nothing left to do but smile, smile smile”—This T was given to me by a family friend, herein called The Source, which he got from the parking lot of a Jerry-era Dead show. I got it in 1996, an early long-sleeved gem. Black and purple on either side of the stealie, with a smiley inside and the lyrics from He’s Gone, “Steal your face right off your head,” underneath.

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4. Sugar Magnolia T—Stealie with green and yellow on either side of the lightning bolt. Underneath was lyrics from Sugar Mag, “She’s my summer love in the Spring, Fall, and Winter…” Tour dates on the back from Fall 92 Dead tour. Shirts like this get reproduced today, but you can’t find ’em like this anymore.

5. Blue tie dye, Skeleton with Roses—Blue/white tye dye. Acquired from The Source. I’ve seen this shirt on other people, but it was cool! I had the same image on a window sticker that’s still beautifying my parent’s house.

6. Deal T—Jerry-era parking lot T from The Source featuring a cartoon Jerry playing poker against cartoon skeletons, with the lyrics to Deal in bubble letters. Tour dates from 92 Tour on back. This was the best shirt of them all! In 1999 I happened to be wearing this shirt at a Merl Saunders concert, who played keys with Jerry in the Legion Of Mary. Merl sang Deal that night and I was in the front row, pointing to the lyrics on my shirt he was singing. He smiled. RIP, Merl! I wish I had a picture of this T somewhere!

7. VW Busses—Lot shirt from The Source. Dates from 90s tour on back. Everybody who saw me was envious of this BEAST of a shirt, and I’d kill to have it back and in good condition (I wore it to shreds). It was the best shirt I or anyone else ever owned.

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7. American Gothic Skeletons—Classic Grant Wood American painting rendered in Grateful Dead styles, a male and female skeleton farmer in tie dyes and overalls, etc. Lot t-shirt given by a good friend’s older brother—Source 2. This shirt was COOL!

8. Yosemite Sam Dead—frosh shirt from early 90s, inherited from Source 2. You can’t see the ‘stache on the skeleton, but it was there alright.

yo sammity sam Dead t

10. Blues for Allah—Dead at the Pyramids Egypt t-shirt, acquired in 1998. “What good is spilling blood, it will not grow a thing.” A friend bought it for me when she visited Israel. I still have this shirt!

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11. Warrior skeleton—this low key Dead T-shirt had a pic of a skeleton on horseback wearing native regalia, on his shield was an ad supporting the Rex Foundation, named after a Dead roadie who died. Acquired from The Source.

12. The Wheel—Jerry Bear riding a motorcycle, green tye dye. I gave this to a close buddy and devoted Dead Head. I got a lot of shirts in my day, more than I gave away.

13. Jerrymeister—people think this is a booze shirt, but it’s Jerrymeister. Lyrics from Brown Eyed Women on the back. Purchased at Grateful Fest in Ohio, ’09.

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14. “Grateful Dead Ain’t Nothin’ to Fuck With”—Dead and Wu Tang mash-up. Phish show parking lot, SPAC, ’14.

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15. San Diego Chargers/ Stealie—Chargers/Dead mashup. Grateful Fest, ’09. Pretty much just a white t-shirt at this point.

16. Ohio Buckeyes/Stealie—Dead/Buckeyes mashup, Grateful Fest ’09. Gave to a beloved friend.

17. Pink/Salmon Jerry Stealie—from Grateful Fest, ’09. It’s a nice thick cotton piece, of higher quality than other bootleg shirts, which you come to appreciate after a while.

18. Jerry Bear—this one was a gift, a friend saw it at The Gap! Weird, but hey. Dead shirts once supported people in need of money to see more Jerry shows and now it’s sweatshops, but this shirt does

19. Sphinx Jerry Bear tie dye—This had a Jerry Bear as a Sphinx, and there was a pyramid or two. I vaguely remember getting it at Kensington in the 2000s. Looking through pics I saw it. I also had another Space Your Face tie dye, and probably some others I can’t remember to be honest.

random tie dye

20. Cats Under the Stars: I got a JGB T-shirt in San Fran in 2012, with the famous logo from the Cats album.

Honourable Mentions:

You get to spoon with Jerry every night when this is your blankie. Acquired in late 90s from The Source, who I understand got it from Haight/Ashbury.

Technically this is not a Dead shirt. My good buddy, younger brother of Source #2, is seen rocking a serious tie dye skiing/snowboarding Jerry Bear shirt.

Against categorizing people

12 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Beatles, Bieber, categorizing, Languages, mindfulness

How odd it is, the number of people with intense opinions / judgements about millions of total strangers. Whether these opinions are positive or negative, the very underlying premise–that a person can have an accurate opinion about millions of strangers–is ridiculous, even if it’s quite commonly done.

It usually take the basic form of, people from ____ country are _____. Nations get reputations, or people from these countries are thought to embody certain supposedly national traits.

Another form of generalization comes from people making an assessment of the government of a certain country, and judge citizens of that country in relation to what they think of the people ruling it.

It’s usually subconscious, and it’s done even though it sounds quite stupid when said aloud.

People from rich Western countries look down on people who live under totalitarian rule, like North Korea, or under more or less military rule, like Pakistan. I suspect North Americans will say they care about the lives of such people, and they may, but there’s still a quiet and automatic feeling of superiority. We have no control over the system of government we’re born into, but I suppose many people here feel like we earned it. Like we deserve to have been born in a stable, wealthy nation.

I know people who hate Trudeau, yet are prepared to judge millions of people in another country by who rules over them. There are people who make an assessment of a foreign country’s leadership, then, based on this, believe these countries should be militarily invaded and attacked. Really, consider this.

My rule of thumb is, anybody who can’t name the language spoken in another country, let alone actually speak it, can’t really have an opinion about that country worth hearing. I lived in India for 1.5 years and didn’t learn Hindi. I only interacted to a subset of people who speak English, and this was very limiting. I know a lot more about India than I used to, but for a real political opinion, speak to a native. Natives from different regions. You can begin to understand another country’s politics when you understand their political cartoons.

The thing that determines status worldwide is money: Rich nations export their culture, and their culture becomes international pop culture. It’s not necessarily because it’s better art, there’s just money behind it, and confidence, and this sends it around the world. The fact that it’s been exported convinces people it ought to have been exported, and they’re more likely to embrace it because it was presented to them than they would if they stumbled on it themselves in some remote corner of the internet.

That art from their country is present around the world makes the people from that country feel superior, even if they have absolutely nothing to do with the art’s creation. That’s why politicians eagerly claim artists born within their borders, even if they didn’t fund or inspire or have anything else to do with the art. Countries even brag about writers who spent their lives denouncing that country, or at least its government. Politicians are likely to praise local writers they have never read, let alone understand.

It’s not a coincidence that America’s culture has circled the globe, and so has its military. Beyonce is great! Coca Cola is shit. Governments judge art not aesthetically but by how much Soft Power it’s worth. Art in this sense has no artistic value, or at least is not valued for its actual artistic value, it just confers status and prestige. If you see the way people scream at concerts, from Beatles to Bieber, you’ll see it’s as if they’re responding to partaking in their status by being in its presence, rather than showing appreciation for music they enjoy.

I am definitely not criticizing American artists! Most writers and musicians I love are American. I repeat, I love them. But all countries produce excellent artists, and we simply never come to know them. I’m sure of it. People claiming prestige because they come from the country that produced Melville, even if they’ve never read Moby Dick, are the same people judging strangers by what cultural capital that country has allegedly produced.

Culture in North America usually takes the form of ready-made Products–songs, novels, something ready for sale. In India, I found culture was mostly created to make the surroundings more beautiful. Textiles were created so people have something nicer to wear, and even though of course they are sold, its inspiration was artistic rather than commercial. Music is played in temples, to accompany prayer. I went to Piano Man to see some jazz, but small venues like that are rare. When I wanted to listen to some music, I went to my local Gurdwara.

Cultural needs to be understood in its context. There are people who think Pakistan isn’t a cultural capital because it allegedly hasn’t produced novels in the Western Canon. This is like saying American writers are behind because it hasn’t produced any good ghazals.

Anyway, I submit that people shouldn’t judge strangers by things that have absolutely nothing to do with them: their government, their artists. The truth is, they say you can be married to someone for years, and one day wake up and realize you don’t really know them. How is it then, that people form such strong and rigid views about millions of perfect strangers?

We’re probably hard-wired for the days when humans lived in way smaller groups, and even though it’s tempting to do we’re not mentally equipped to process reasonable verdicts on millions let alone billions of people. Especially total strangers. So it’s good to recognize this limitation, and only judge people or things after making reasonable contact. Don’t judge things without context. It sounds easy, but we all kind of do it.

Calibrate your outlook according to your staggering ignorance (no matter how many things you know, there’s way more you don’t…this has nothing to do with lack of intelligence, there’s just way too much out there to grasp–it’d take many lifetimes), be humbled by this, and keenly appreciate how little we know. Then judge, or not judge, accordingly.

On what I currently listen for in music

16 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Jeff Halperin, Miles Davs, Music, The Band

My musical ear has changed. I always listened to excellent music—my first loves were MC Hammer, Aerosmith, Dance Mix 92-95, Phish and of course Grateful Dead. I don’t regret one note I listened to, but I wasn’t listening to the whole of every song, and gravitated too heavily to the guitar.

It’s begging the question: Did I focus too much on guitar because I was a guitar player, or is that why I became a guitar player in the first place? In either case, I didn’t properly value rhythm sections. I should have listened to everything. This might seem like not really a big deal but actually I think of it now as a sonic sin, akin to watching only 80% of the every screen while watching a movie. Musically, I was crooked.

Rhythm sections were something I responded to, I felt them, but didn’t hear. To be fair, I listened to a lot of bootleg Dead tapes with varying degrees of audio quality. But to listen to the drums without really hearing the bass is to hear the drums without their context. Drums and bass live together, there’s a dialogue between them in the music, and to only hear one is to really miss both.

I have known this for a while now, maybe months, but felt this quite intensely the other day messing around on a bass while my buddy drummed. The bass drum and the bass guitar are a tandem. It’s very possible to like a band because of their rhythm section without quite knowing that’s why you like them. That’s why Dave Byrne of Talking Heads wore that big suit, to make his head look small and his body look big as a reminder that music is fundamentally physical, not intellectual.

Early, the jazz bass player’s role was to support a soloist improvising over the tune’s harmony. They soloed, too, but it was mostly a supportive role. In 1970 Miles gives us Bitches Brew, which isn’t just a killer album title, it provides musical hints about the new direction: the instruments simmer together in a cauldron. Gone is the formula for 50’s jazz and even the freer 60’s stuff, where all instruments play the head of the tune, principle soloist solos first followed by second and third horn, drum solo then close with the song’s opening melody. Rather, there’s one groove that everyone participates in at the same time.

I had one saxophone lesson in 2007, wherein my teacher made an astute observation that astonished me: Coltrane was a hog! He kept soloing forever and forever, with the best rhythm players backing him. There was no melodic exchange. Now, I love Coltrane deeply, but this is more or less what he did.

A nasty alto player who used to run the Dal sax department told me something similarly astonishing: He said Cannonball Adderley was content with his bad ass swing, while tortured Coltrane changed his sound every week because he was just unsatisfied. I had thought Coltrane’s quest to find music’s highest height was a service to humanity. I will never say a bad word about John Coltrane, whose sublime music has genuinely given to me more than what religious people get from religion. Once in a while I’ll play him and have a kind of sacred experience, but generally I need music structured differently.

Miles said he learned from Sly and the Family Stone how to dismantle that old standard jazz formula, and melt his horn into the other instruments, rather than playing one after another in their turn.

The Band is the perfect sound for me now because of its balance. On the surface they don’t appear to have anything in common with Miles, but not only did they play on bills together in the early 70’s, their music is both a cauldron even if the brew is nothing alike.

The Band was a bar band for 10 years before they recorded their first album. This is key to understanding them. They had played loud high-octane Rock in every bar in the American South and Ontario. In the studio, in Big Pink, they wanted to turn the instruments down, hear each other, play songs on which their instruments intertwined. No virtuoso guitar or drum or bass solos. Their music is on a foundation of interdependence.

Most bands only have one or two super talented members whereas everyone in The Band is an all star. So maybe other groups can’t be as balanced as they are because their talent is dispersed lopsidedly—it’s a question of talent, not vision.

Glenn Gould said it’s “anti-democratic” for a pianist to have one dominant hand. Sure, but commitment to democracy isn’t enough, it’s very difficult to have a left hand that plays as deftly as the right. Gould would call The Band democratic. They are perfectly, utterly balanced.

There’s something so tacky to me now, even vulgar, about million-notes-a-minute guitar solos. So guitar-centric. “Play rhythm for me while I shred” is like asking friends for a favour rather than hanging out together on equal terms. This kind of solo is a physical achievement of dexterity, not necessarily a musical one. I can marvel at Steve Vai and G3, even feel envy at their shocking chops, but I don’t really want to listen to it.

Picasso had to prove he could paint in a renaissance style before his more abstract stuff was taken seriously. Why? For many people art can’t be serious unless it passes a certain threshold of technical achievement. This is understandable to an extent—you don’t want to celebrate an artist that produces something an untrained infant can.

Yet complexity does not equal quality. Would his abstract work be any less incredible if Picasso couldn’t also paint in a renaissance style? Does Neil Young need jazz chops to be taken seriously? Of course not, it’s ridiculous. Every artist is their own genre.

Most art presupposes the possession of certain amount of artistic skill, but not all. Judging art purely by the skill required to pull it off, rather than by the vision or soul behind it, is nearly as vulgar as judging paintings by how much money the Art World says it is worth. A solo isn’t good because it’s hard to play, but because it’s musical. Of course it’s OK to be impressed with a tough passage, but only if it’s musical.

Art is a mood, a vibe, a sound, a feel. Art is not ranked along any one ultimate hierarchy. But in music, I think it’s important to give the same weight to all the instruments. Actually I think Western Classical generally privileges melody and harmony over rhythm, the first conditioning of the Western ear. This dynamic trickles down.

The ironic thing is African music was often called “primitive” specifically because the rhythms were literally too sophisticated for Westerners to process. There’s a moment in the Ginger Baker documentary when he’s hanging privately with one of his hero drummers as a teenager, who plays records of some African drumming. Baker is asked to name the time signature, identify where the beat starts. He cannot.

Balance for me in music is along this axis to, between harmony, melody and rhythm. Rhythm should be a feature, not in service to the other two. I listen to a lot of Atlantic Soul records now, where the punch is the groove, not some dazzling soloist.

Music is infinite permutations of tension and release. I want to caution against confusing sophistication in music or art for quality: Like I said, I still love that old Dance Mix stuff, and a lot of old E-A-B blues is basic on paper but sounds like shit unless you play and sing with feel. If you can dance to a tune or you like hearing a song, that song has done its job.

But the music hitting me hardest now has togetherness, it’s communal. The Band sounds like they’re all having a great time hanging out together (and when they stopped enjoying hanging out, their music immediately suffered). It’s not an accident that they all play each other’s instruments, live and on albums. They’ve transcended their particular instrument and are playing music.

A wise friend told me once there are four stages to music. The first is “unconscious-unknowing.” Think of a child who plays air guitar because they feel the music in their bones but have no idea how to play actual music. Second is “conscious-unknowing,” the beginner who labours to follow the basic instructions, but is now playing music. Third is “conscious-knowing,” the accomplished musician who knows what and how to play but still must think about it. The final stage, that almost nobody reaches, is “unconscious-knowing,” where music is simply felt and transferred to the instrument immediately, without thought required.

This fourth category is filled with musicians who have transcended their instrument, or maybe two or more instruments. Their music isn’t a physical phenomenon anymore. It’s not even a cerebral one, because while it takes brains to play, it’s about feeling as much as thoughts. Not just the degree of thoughts and feelings—not how much intelligence and feeling is there–but the nature of these things.

The only pertinent question to musicians in the fourth category is: what are their musical thoughts like? How good are these thoughts/feelings? Charlie Parker’s music is nearly impossible to play, but that isn’t his real achievement. It’s his ideas that are impossible to conceive of. Lots of people mimic Parker today, and they are incredible musicians! It’s very, very hard to do! But they are reproducing his licks, not the mental originality that gave rise to them in the first place.

Musical ideas need not be complex to be good. It’s instructive that when musicians get tired of playing bebop, they mellow out and play grooves. Miles’ Birth of the Cool or even Kind of Blue. Thought of this way, the idea of ranking musicians or bands in sequential order is ridiculous.

I worry that a lot of people hear music on YouTube and it sounds like shit. MP4s, or iTunes, sounds like shit. Non-flac digital files compress music so that a device can store a million songs. Really, the sound waves have a narrower range. It’s a real distortion. Apple, Spotify and YouTube offer immediate access to every song on earth, and in exchange, they don’t sound as good. This may differ from recording to recording, or on your speakers or something, but I suspect there is a generation hearing subpar music. As TVs have improved their picture, our audio quality has gotten worse.

I say this not merely as grumpy man, but from having taught guitar to kids for years and seeing how they listen now, on devices or computers. I suspect the worsening audio quality impacts the way contemporary producers and DJs create and play music. Medium Is The Message kinda thing. But that’s a longer story for another day.

An old proverb I heard is “chess is an ocean in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe.” Same goes for music. Take from it as much or as little as you want. If you like having it on in the background, cool! But listening actively is a life-long activity that evolves, and pleasure really deepens. However far you want to go in listening to music, there are many who have already gone further. That this is true is just such, such a blessing.

Response to Professional Essay: Exercise 3.16–Writing By Choice, Eric Hendersen

04 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Writing By Choice, Third Edition. Eric Hendersen. Oxford University Press. Don Mills Ontario. Page 96-96

Briefly analyze the essay’s introduction. Consider the effectiveness of the opening and the thesis statement. Is Halperin successful in establishing his approach to the topic of dog versus houseplants?

“They’re barking money pits, these dogs, and for too long we’ve been under the false impression that they’re better than houseplants.”

Yes. Halperin’s opening and thesis statement are effective–finally, a writer addresses the crucial issue of “dogs versus houseplants,” for so long neglected by the Mainstream Media.

How could you characterize the writer’s tone? Give specific examples. How could awareness of tone affect your reading of the essay?

Halperin’s tone is fearless. Resolute. Some writers are glib in the face of society’s most dire crises, relying on humour as a crutch because the grimmest truths are too uncomfortable.

“Unlike dogs, plants will forever maintain their poise no matter how many times you ring the doorbell…Dogs, on the other hand, are famous for attacking mailmen—an obvious sign of class warfare.”

In an era where mafia states infiltrate Western countries, where the planet’s ecology is systematically destroyed and sold, and global economic disparity is increasing grotesquely in an age of post-scarcity, these are dark times and it is comforting to find a writer as serious and perceptive as Halperin.

Analyze one of the body paragraphs, using criteria discussed in this and/or previous chapters.

“Finally, after years of attachment, your plant will grow and so will your pleasure with it. With casual care, your plant can actually outlive you. No matter how much you care for your dog, it will end up dead in a crumpled heap on the floor…”

Here, Halperin’s overflowing optimism is balanced against his aversion to sentimentality. Without being mawkish Halperin manages to describe love’s unfathomable ability to survive death, so long as the heart in which it resides is true.

The world has not seen metaphysical musings combining cosmic seriousness with comic playfulness since John Donne, 1572-1631. Of course, no criterion in this university textbook can sufficiently describe the lofty heights reached in this paragraph or any other.

Identify the compare and contrast method Halperin uses and the bases for comparison. You can use the appropriate diagrammatic model on page 95, above, to show method and bases for comparison.

“It’s not all economics. Plants give back oxygen without even being asked. This is a real kindness because you can’t overestimate the importance of oxygen…dogs only give you something with the understanding that you’ll throw it back to them in an endlessly futile cycle.”

Halperin uses the compare/contrast method in body paragraph 5 to denounce the way capitalistic societies have become totally transactional—where the commercial pay-or-be-paid ethos filters down to inner lives, so that even personal relationships are conducted like bookkeeping where every positive and negative action/remark is kept inside a ledger, where all existence is reduced to a realm where altruism by definition does not and cannot exist. This is definitely what Halperin is really getting at.

House Plants Are Better Than Dogs

[full text]

[1] Some people believe that a home isn’t a home without a dog. To hear these people talk, you’d think that shedded hair, sharp fangs and crap on carpets are trivial matters. They’re barking money pits, these dogs, and for too long we’ve been under the false impression that they’re better than houseplants. Let’s investigate.

[2] Unlike dogs, plants will forever maintain their poise no matter how many times you ring the doorbell. Calm, cool and collected, the houseplant is a model of patience and even temperament. They bow down to nobody, see no race or class. Perfectly reflecting the modern zeitgeist, plants represent the highest ideal of egalitarian tolerance. Dogs, on the other hand, are famous for attacking mailmen–an obvious gesture of class warfare.

[3] You can be sure plants won’t harass the company at your next dinner party, but don’t be fooled into thinking they’re entirely dormant. They grow in response to Bach fugues, which would be a compliment to their ear, if they had one.

[4] In light of nuclear disaster and the rising cost of gas, there’s a big hubbub about how best to harness the sun’s energy. But plants settled this millions of years ago. Living off the sun’s rays, plants are their own solar panels. Scientifically way ahead of us and financially more responsible, plants don’t need government handouts for their energy exchange program. Shame dogs don’t eat rain and sunshine, eh?

[5] It’s not all economics. Plants give back oxygen without even being asked. That is a real kindness because you can hardly overstate the importance of oxygen. Plants can’t help but be givers. In comparison, dogs only give you something with the understanding that you’ll throw it back to them over and over in an endlessly futile cycle. Also, dogs need to go to school just to figure out how to sit down or play dead. Plants don’t need to be taught how to play dead. They’re autodidacts

[6] Admittedly there’s something to be said for a dog that quietly nestles on your lap after a hard day’s work. But ask yourself: has your dog signed a contract indicating he won’t revert to pissy pre-housebroken days? What if some horrible canine violence on TV suddenly provokes him and he becomes a biter? Plants offer unrivalled peace of mind. You can take plants at their word. Nothing can make them bite you or crap under your bed.

[7] Finally, after years of attachment, your plant will grow and so will your pleasure with it. With casual care, your plant can actually outlive you. No matter how you care for your dog, it will end up dead in a crumpled heap on the floor. If you have kids, they’ll cry. All’s well that ends well, but it never ends well with dogs.

[8] Yes, dogs can be sweet, cuddly and affectionate–they aren’t wholly without commendable traits, even though it’s much, much better to get a houseplant. But in all fairness, at least dogs are a cheaper, lower maintenance, and cuter alternative to getting a baby.

On Trudeau in India

24 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Modi, Trudeau in India, trump, Trump Jr

Indian’s love for Trudeau was palpable to me when I was there. I’d ride on the Delhi metro, people asked where I was from, I’d say Canada, and they started praising him, eyes lit up. Colleagues went pretty gaga too. Not everyone, but many.

That’s worn off, it seems. Indian media got a whiff of how thick he lays on overt shows of multiculturalism. Corny and embarrassing, he made an exhibit of himself. You can wear Indian garb without drawing too much attention to yourself. Trudeau wore juutis to meet SRK. It’s hardly apocalypse, though. Just clothing. I’d rather have a leader who tries too hard to appear multicultural than one mostly silent in the face of Muslims being lynched, or another who is soft-on-Nazis.

The author at a wedding in Delhi, February 2016.

Oddly I’ve just been reading Khushwant Singh’s old essays on the roots of communal violence in Punjab. The Atwal episode is indeed strange and unjustifiable– a mistake was made. There are questions not just about how Atwal got invited, but about how he was suddenly allowed to enter India, when Jagmeet Singh was denied a visa. More will be learned about this. Right wing Indians suspect Trudeau’s government covertly supports Khalistan independence. I doubt Justin knows what that is. Likewise, it’s amusing how the attack dogs in conservative media here are suddenly experts on Khalistan.

While Trudeau’s India trip went stunningly bad, it’s not like the stakes were very high. What would real ties with Modi–the Hindu nationalist killer of gujarat–look like? What was to be gained here was relatively low in dollar value, high in cultural exchange between nations with a strong, historical fondness for each other…ie a great trip for Trudeau would have brought about results mostly symbolic anyway. India’s economy has lost its sheen post-demonetization/gst and Nirav Modi has the spotlight back on ol’ fashion crony corruption. Trudeau is in Delhi now with Hayley Wickenheiser and Ladakhi hockey players on an exchange–My loves, combined! Canadian Ice hockey and not just India but Ladakh coming together, it’s a warm thought.

Ladakh!! August 2017.

Modi has less to gain than Canadians may think by posing with Trudeau. They each represent countries that get along well, apart from that they have nothing in common. Some from India’s right celebrate trump’s birthday by eating cake in Jantar Mantar. Trudeau may be more useful as a person to be distanced from. Not even his worst detractor here will call Trudeau a strong-man leader. Modi’s coolness wasn’t an accident, but the Canada-India cultural connection is too strong for him to sideline Trudeau altogether. They hugged in the end.

But Modi ran to the airport to hug trump the instant he landed because he feels a kinship with a leader who also leads via personality-cult and fascist tendencies. And trump has new condos to sell in India, so he pretends to care about India. Indeed, trump Jr is in India right now talking with billionaires, to try to get their money. Trump backs India enough to hug Modi and do the photo op because it suits his personal economic interests, but will deny H1B visas to Indians seeking to come to America because ultimately they’re not white.

That’s my view of things, from the vantage of TO. By the way, I love and miss you India!! Reminder: a country is much, much more than its leader. Indeed, national leaders almost never reflect their country’s actual inhabitants.

Canada at 150 in New Delhi at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

“Me Too” backlash is ridiculous

27 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Some people are mad (or scared!) culture seems finally determined to protect women from sexual assault and rape. They may insist protecting women is a good thing, yes, but the effort has gone too far!

“It’s a Witch Hunt!” they say. No, it’s not. There are no such things as witches. Creeps and rapists exist. They’re everywhere.

OK, but now any woman can say anything and just like that, an innocent man’s life is ruined. Actually, when a female victim comes forward, it’s she who gets piled on, threatened, her reputation attacked. There are very real barriers keeping victims from speaking out publicly. The notion that women are lining up en masse to make up lies just to destroy innocent men is ridiculous.

Why is there more concern about these theoretical men who could maybe have their futures ruined, instead of all the actual women whose past, present and futures contain suffering?

“OK,” they say, “but not every creepy thing is rape!” Who can’t tell between a grope and forced penetration? Women know the difference. Any normal person does. They’re all unacceptable, but they’re not interchangeable or identical. This is easy to understand.

The’re a fear that employers and political parties are just throwing anybody from Aziz to Weinstein under the bus together. Well, companies and political parties have always clamored to protect their reputation / brand. When have they ever cared more about ethics and legal justice for workers than their own self-interest? The only thing that’s changed is, now, enough people consider sexual assault to be bad that they want to disassociated themselves from it.

The notion that men can’t make jokes in the workplace anymore, because anything will get them fired…is it really so onerous, to ask professionals to be professional? I held some zingers back. It kind of was a crime! They were good ones. But, damn it, I was a committed professional in my last office.

People are very quick to defend an accused man, even before anyone knows what he’s accused of. An illustrative example is Patrick Brown, the Conservative candidate for Ontario until a few days ago. His entire staff stepped down when it became known that a report accusing him of sexual assault was imminent. Brown denied all guilt. Many supported him. I heard his backers suggest it was merely a butt grab…even before they had any idea what he was accused of.

Turns out the accusation is that as a federal MP he gave alcohol to an 18-year-old and asked her to suck his dick. Words to the effect of that or “put this in your mouth.” She did, then she was uncomfortable and stopped. Another woman accused him of giving her alcohol when she was 18, and throwing her on the bed trying to kiss her. He maintained his innocence, his party tossed him out.

I’m not sure hatred for Kathleen Wynne was the only reason people rushed to defend Brown, because women in general are doubted. Rather than try to glean reality accurately, there’s a tendency to minimize, to reduce all accusations to the mildest one any man has ever been accused of.

Brown is an interesting case, because journalists and insiders apparently knew about him long before. They interpreted this story as finally it’s coming out, whereas this came out of the blue for most people, myself included. Who else knew, and when? That can be asked of every case.

Recall, even Weinstein initially insisted on his innocence and people believed him. Even though now apparently everybody knew. It’s been since reported in New Yorker’s “Army of Spies” that he hired former Mossad agent to spy on women he abused, to make sure they didn’t come forward, and to make sure journalists didn’t report on him for it.

There’s a fundamental difference between the court of public opinion and actual courts. An accused has the presumption of innocence when the state can imprison them. This is as it should be!

But by granting accused men the presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion, they assume women coming forward are guilty: it’s impossible to assume they’re both equally innocent at the same time. The neutral thing is keep your opinion suspended until more is known. Though I admit, I am now inclined to believe women. Remember, this court is just the collective society’s opinion. It can’t punish anyone. Public opinion never fires someone, only companies or political parties do, and it’s based on their perception of how public opinion will affect them.

The flood of men being called out is because there’s a decades-long backlog. It’ll slow down, hopefully, when men improve.

Also, ignore boomers when they inevitably say ridiculous things like “in my day, we didn’t consider that assault!” as if their obsolete standards should matter in this day they just acknowledged we’re not in. Do they think assault should be tolerated now, because they tolerated it?

More to the point, who cares about them? Black people had separate water fountains in the US until 1964, and the last Canadian Government-run residential school closed in 1994. It would be a needless shame if we calibrated today’s world according to what that generation found OK.

I should add, nothing above is really partisan or buzzkill-y. Have sex! Enjoy! Fuck! Have afternoon anal for all I care. Just have it be consensual, which isn’t a big ask. If your’e doing it all right she won’t merely give you permission, she’ll repeatedly beg you to fuck her harder.

[Note: Jan 30–I don’t want to be mistaken for sounding flippant last para: I should have made my larger point clearer, that if a man/woman sends “mixed signals” it should interpreted as a red light not a green.

Also, I used salty language here perhaps unadvisably but not mindlessly, to indirectly combat the misguided notion I fear is kinda prevalent among men, that concern for safety/comfort of your sexual partner is somehow for prigs or killjoys.]

On Aging: An increasingly growing problem

29 Friday Dec 2017

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aging, Happy new years, New years, parenting

On my forehead stand a couple relics, hairs that have bravely refused to recede. They demarcate the old boundaries of my hairline. A stinging reminder of what was. Proud but sad, like a luxury hotel in an abandoned country.

I noticed them years ago when a Cool Barber downtown cut them off. Why is he applying a razor to my forehead? It was my first time at a Cool Barber so I thought maybe that was a trend? What I’m saying is, it was inconceivable to me that my hairline could recede.

When a buddy told me in 2014 that I was in fact losing some hair, I feared he was losing his mind. Me? When time begins to deteriorate the body, it doesn’t usually announce itself. Timing and severity is the difference between the balding 20-year old and the Silver Fox whose thick grey hair signals, unfairly, both old age and youth. But my situation seemed doubly unfair: Not only am I subject to hair loss, but why do I have in several places where hair isn’t strictly necessary, but not my head? What kind of shit is this, fate, you bastard?

My dad used to point to the skin on his head and say to me: “Look, son: this is your future.” I laughed. It was funny then and even now, despite the statement’s latent horror. The unavoidable fact is I am older than I used to be.

People say when you return home after skipping town things stay the same. That isn’t quite true. The cost of Toronto housing has become three or four tiers more insane and my social circle includes literal babies. The sign you have completed one major revolution in life’s cycle is hanging out with people well under the legal drinking age.

How, when did it come to this? Timeless questions. Age and time was once automatically measured and felt when it was linked to a school year. Time was divided into neat sections, then every few months was a milestone. Summer. As reward for completing some little time unit, go drink and smoke in the woods for two months (camp, fun place). Then start it all again. Repeat. Such was time. One day there is nothing left to graduate.

But my god, I’m not dying! I’m 33. Growing up, especially for males, was to have an immortality complex. The first signs of aging doesn’t mean death is around the corner, but it’s a sign that I am in fact subject to death. This is new and tbh not altogether pleasant.

With age comes responsibilities, some great and inevitable, but I don’t want age to determine things.

One of the best nights I had in India was hanging out with a 55-year-old friend, drinking and singing songs on guitar until 5am. In North America and in consumer society in general people are slotted into demographics. The more they are targeted, the more its reinforced and they come to think of themselves in narrow age terms. This is reductionist and limiting. People feel they can’t learn new skills or art, adventure. Age groups do not mingle here. It’s not like that elsewhere.

In 2016 I went to a rager Holi party loaded with babies and grandparents. That obnoxious class of people—20-somethings—were in abundance too. There was a kiddy pool, fully-catered food and open bar. I was wet, full and drunk. Some military gentleman hosted it in his Defence Colony home. The dance floor was hot, karaoke was bumping. I wasn’t sure what affect bhang would have on me, so I took it twice. Everyone went home by 4:30pm.

This party would never happen in Canada, not just because Holi is Indian but age here creates rigid barriers. Silos. Surrounded by people of different ages, people perform. The young strive to appear mature. The older, mature enough. People try to be an age, instead of themselves.

This different schema/outlook has parenting implications. My good Delhi buddy is a 40-year-old father with an 11-year-old kid. The boy came to some parties and saw us smoking hash. It’s a funny time in Toronto as we await Canada legalizing weed—there are people (crusty obsolete weenies) who would call child services and report this maniac of a dad, even as conservative politicians who recently demanded mandatory minimums for possessing weed jostle to become drug dealers. (Great article on Julian Fantino’s hypocrisy) My buddy justified it on very principled, philosophical grounds. In thrust, “I live a moral life, so why should I have to hide anything from my child?”

Aging requires answering one fundamental question: Will I live how my parents/community did, or carve out something different? There is no right answer There are probably elements of both. It’s worth saying, some otherwise indefensible values are defended simply because it’s the traditional way of doing things. But the familiarity and sense of belonging to one’s own culture can be meaningful, too.

This will affect where people decide to live, whether to raise a family, what kind of values underlie all this in our adult lives.

Actually, I no longer believe there is any such thing as “adults”. When you’re six, the nine-year-old at the playground is intimidating because they’re enormous and, being nine, they know life. I wonder what senior citizens think, as they watch people in their 60s and 70s fuck up the planet so badly. As a kid you see a friend’s parents, or your own, and you assume they’re responsible and wise. No, some are just children ravaged by time, so they look like that. Really they have coke problems, mid-life crises or other complexes. Maybe they’re terminally immature.

Age guarantees nothing. There are many very wise children and elderly maniacs with no grip on reality. Don’t get me wrong all things being equal, age brings wisdom and I respect people who lived through stuff. But all things are not equal, and the notion that people are on a guaranteed track marching forward towards Responsibility and Wisdom simply because they haven’t died yet is not true.

Wordsworth and Blake were onto something when they praised children. I’ve never seen an infant commit genocide! Everyone loves childhood innocence. What about adult guilt?

My hope is AI replaces everybody so we can all chill for a living. I’d like for us to all age gracefully, without being so fixated on the look rather than the health of our bodies. I don’t want to be forced or nudged into abiding by social mores concerning age that aren’t mine.

I won’t be a different man when those lonesome, heroic forehead hairs finally admit defeat. Other hairs will surely go, too. I accept my age now. It’s OK! Again, I’m not 101. But when I am fatter and even more severely weathered I hope there’s still a party for me somewhere, playing guitar until late. If there isn’t, I’ll make my own. Even if I’m saddled with those ever-present things going around these days, children.

Happy New Year’s, everybody!

In India from Canada–jumping between economies, consumerism, money and other thoughts

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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India, travel

The following is simply a reflection of my own experience after living in India for a year and a half.

Every county has a range of shops and stores, from cheap to expensive and in between, covering everything from food and fashion. But if any country has the full range, it’s India.

Really rich Indians make Forest Hill people look like paupers, and they shop and live accordingly. The cheapest shops in India are very cheap. A local merchant, a vegetable wallah or whatever, can charge a white man like me way more than he’d charge an Indian, unable to believe his luck he can rip someone off so bad. But I’m used to Toronto prices, so I feel guilty I’m ripping him off. Both things are true at the same time.

If you want to spend a lot of money by Toronto standards in India, you can. There is a class of Indians who have fuck-you money, who never look at price tags. This exists, probably in larger number than Torontonians suspect, even if it’s barely a fraction of the Indian population. A quick Google search tells me that the average annual Indian income is $616 US. This is the figure, though another quick Google search says there are 236,000 Indian millionaires. The total population is roughly 1,300,000,000 (poor people do not immediately jump into the census when born) but some of these millionaires are actually billionaires, too, and I wonder what India’s average annual income would look like if you removed a handful of people at the very top. Millions of people make way, way less than $616 a year.

Before arriving, I was curious to see how evolved consumerism and ad culture was in India, or Delhi at least. The food scene is intriguing. Food delivery is very common: There is an enormous surplus of labour, and they jump on one of a million motorcycles in Delhi and deliver McDonald’s or whatever else. Smaller commercial restaurants may outsource their food delivery. There is always someone to do anything for a tiny amount of money.

Smaller local non-chain restaurants are a different story. They often don’t deliver. If the menu says a masala dosa costs 60 rupees ($1.20 Cdn), that’s what it costs. No tax. Somehow, this is just fine. Modi’s new HST tax means 18% is added, and this applies in fancier sit-down restaurants or North American chains. In smaller local places, the price is the price.

But being a white Torontonian yuppie scum meant I could toggle between economies when convenient. Obviously people with more money can buy what they want, this isn’t a revelation, but life has a very different quality when even luxuries are fundamentally affordable, when strangers assume of me, rightly, that I can pay for what they charge for a dentist, between $22-30 Cdn (one time they did some free orthodontistry work too) or medical, or whatever food. Maybe it’s wise to save, but there is no cost in life if I decide to buy some nice food or whatever.

Delhi is a dirty city. The air is poison. I should say, street sweepers and others do a great job of cleaning, everyday. Shockingly poor people scavenge for garbage. In Lajpat Nagar 1 where I lived, there was a dump near me and people just go around picking stuff up.

Without getting into deeper reasoning or socio-cultural explanations for the root of Indian garbage habits, in this dirtier city I decided to buy a fancy face wash. Exfoliating, with rose and honey and apricot. This luxury item, an Indian product, cost like $2 and some odd cents. French hygiene products, for wealthier Indians, cost more than they do in Toronto.

I could buy things from the economy where prices are calibrated for poorer Indians, or if I felt like it from the foreigner economy. If I want to buy a super cheap souvenir, I pay local prices. The Lajpat Nagar II main market sold bangles, I think it was $1 for a dozen. In Toronto, the other day I happened to be at a local so-called Found Objects store selling bangles, and laughed to see each individual bangle for $2. 100 rupees for a single bangle!

Haircuts in my neighbourhood cost $1-3, and a head massage, those blessed things, could be $1-7. (A head massage is actually the head, shoulders, back, arms, and they crack your knuckles, and also sometimes your neck.). One time I paid $2 for a haircut and a head massage.

But Delhi has Khan Market (read: Con Market), too. It is apparently among the world’s most expensive commercial real estate. When I got homesick, and yearned for the quintessential Toronto experience of being ripped off, I would come here.

About $20 Cdn here got me my beloved bagel lox and cream cheese, with fries and two double espressos. Indulging in India costs less than everyday Toronto.

Khan Market has lots of great yuppie crap, from the Body Shop (foreign soap) to $100 sushi meals with like only four rolls because the damn fish is flown in from god knows where and isn’t exactly overly fresh. The price of exotic items are, fittingly, not calibrated for normal Indians. If it isn’t produced in India, regular Indians probably don’t need it, because historically they never had it. (By “regular” I mean the non-professional types I worked with at the station.)

And again, “affordable” is a relative term. In India, unless it was for the people with Fuck-You money, about everything was affordable to me. Yet I made the legal minimum wage, the lowest salary a foreigner is allowed to receive by law (less, given my cheap ass company worth billions). But I never had to look at my bank account to decide if I could afford a nice lunch.

The truth is I made an obscene amount by Indian standards, and a pathetic amount by Toronto’s. A colleague nearly ten years older and with more than 15 years experience in Indian journalism, with a higher title and level of responsibility in the office than me, made less than half of what I did. Yet I worked there knowing I’d have to reckon with Canadian prices eventually, and that housing in Toronto increased by more than 20% in the time I was away, so that a detached house in Toronto costs well over one million dollars. (50 million Indian rupees). Rent soared, too.

So I knew I was simultaneously rich and not rich. The way in which I was not rich is actually decadent as hell. People making Canadian salaries can go to many countries in the world, and by simple virtue of having been paid Western wages, can live like kings. This does not work the same way in reverse.

I find the relative wealth of the West disturbing and impossible to justify. I’ve seen Indians who work at least 12 hour days 7 days a week, and they’ll make next to nothing. This is one telling symptom of both a national and international economy predicated on absolute bullshit.

I could have delivered to me a smoked salmon sandwich, on a fresh ciabatta bun with craime fraiche and grainy mustard, and two stupid little heart-shaped sugar cookies for about $8-9. Of course there are cheaper things to eat. Spending this much was beyond the possibility for many colleagues, but in Toronto this may get you an appetizer. North Americans who know nothing about India, understandably, may be surprised to learn continental fare is available.

In Lajpat Nagar 1, I occasionally ate chicken, rice and roti made by a woman on my street. It cost almost $2. Very spicy and good! My Indian colleagues were shocked I ate this, as it could be sketchy in fact. Meh.

Street food, oh man. Basic vada pavs, fried potato with nice spices and a fresh yummy bun, cost I think 30 rupees in places. 60 cents. This is not a small amount of money for many locals.

Again, that India is cheaper than Toronto is not a revelation. But the feeling of freely being able to switch between these economies brings some uncomfortable questions. Being able to parachute into a country and live like a king while millions there starve is weird. I’m not responsible for this, but nonetheless you can’t be there and not see and feel how wrong it is. It’s not exactly guilt, because I know I’m not the guilty one, but I’m certainly living a very fine life based on something that does not feel right.

I’d wonder, could an economist explain this in a way that makes sense? Is it just that North America has such valuable currency because the US military is present around the world ensuring that US business interests are looked after? I suspect it’s to do with the latter, but it’s a damn complicated world and this feels like an oversimplification too. But it does seem beyond coincidence that the US dollar is proportionately as high as their global military presence.

But to see people born there, living on the street…there are economic and geo-political lenses this can be seen through, but the situation urges you to see it through basic existential terms. They were just born there, I’m just born here, and whatever the other reasons are, as complicated and diverse as they are, they come second. Not first.

Hash is obscenely cheap, even if, as I understand it, the price has gone up markedly. It is currently $30 Cdn for a “tola”, or ten grams(!!!), of potent Himalayan charras. In Canada this money gets you 2 grams if you’re lucky.

Like I said, the average Indian annual income in 2013 was $616 US. I made $3,000 Cdn, monthly. This sounds like a brag in light of that fact, but remember, I could not have legally made less money. There are white people in India working illegally for charities and NGOs and things like that, and they make less. But it’s true that if you see a white person in India, they had enough money to buy the plane ticket to get there. That the legal minimum was such an obscene amount of money there speaks to how white people have everything work in their favour. Legally, and even culturally in practice, there is always a tailwind for white people.

Before coming to India I was paying Toronto rent and working as a private guitar teacher. No salary, no guaranteed income. I managed to sell some writing here, less reliable than teaching. I had a flatmate in Toronto, where my share of rent was about $1100 monthly. I lived alone in a nice apartment in a good area in South Delhi, and rent was $400 a month. I knew people who paid in rent $120-250ish Cdn.

One time I noticed The Gap was coming to India. Big news! Every Western brand has automatic prestige in India, because it is simply Western. Indians automatically accord respect and importance and high-status to anything Western, even if the thing itself is made in Bangladesh and is merely advertised by North American 20-somethings.

I saw signs, breathlessly praising the upcoming opening of The Gap. Then it opened, and I was curious to see what things cost. A t-shirt, $30 Cdn, same as here. That is insane, I thought, and aside from wealthy Indians who want to signal that they can afford North American prices, Indians won’t go for that. Indians know the price of things and do not waste a single rupee. Paisa vasool. “Finally, The Gap Is Here!” a sign read, or something like that. I thought and hoped Indians were too smart to be taken in by these prices. Next time I came, it read, “Gap Open! Up to 90% off!” Good! Fuckin parasites.

Indian Terrain is a chain store in malls and locations around Delhi and other Indian cities. If I buy a nice button down shirt it can cost about 2,000 Indian rupees, or $40 Cdn. The shirt will be much higher quality than H&M, but actually $10 more expensive, perhaps. But it compares in quality to Club Monaco, where shirts not on sale can range from $40-$120.

Yet In Old Manali, I bought a beautiful button down shirt hand-stitched by the fellas in the store for $10 Cdn, 500 rupees. I know there are people in India selling hand-made shirts with the same fabric for even less.

One thing I noticed, actually, is that poor people in Delhi and elsewhere in North India have clothes that fit well. I speculate on the reasons: most Indians are smaller. Malnourishment is a real problem. Not many people wear XXL. Clothes need to be made in fewer sizes. People in Toronto buy ill-fitting clothes maybe because there are more wrong sizes to buy. This is probably a very dumb gora observation, but I wonder if there’s anything to it.

A few weeks after landing in India, I wondered if I, standing at just over 5”8, was the largest man in the country. I towered over many people who are clearly poor and seem to have suffered from stunted growth. Several of the “office boys” and janitors at work, and people like them in the city. I find that phrase “office boy” demeaning and classist, but it’s a common phrase most Indians would never think to put quotation marks around.

But also, better fit may have to do with Indian merchants being more capable than their Canadian counterparts. People who sell the clothes commonly make them too. There is less division of labour. Shops make and sell, some just sell what’s been pre-made. But even in a commercial store like Levis, you just buy jeans according to waist size, not length—they measure the leg length and cut it there in the store while you wait. I wonder if poor Indians get custom clothes them because tailoring is so common there, so it’s just a part of buying clothes. Here, there’s a premium on “made to measure” or “bespoke” clothing, and the cost goes up by 1000%. I think the idea of having loads of pre-made shirts from factories to sell is relatively new in India, dating back to the early 90s when the economy “liberalized”, ie began its slow, slow opening to Western countries. (Ask a Western businessman if it’s easy to do business in India, and he will say “no” or laugh, no matter what Modiji tells you).

Alas, this is one of those things I could not learn, because it’s so rare for poor Indians to speak or understand English, and my Hindi is pathetic. Hindi meri bakwas hai. I wonder if middle, or upper-middle class Indians will think my speculation is ridiculous. Or maybe it’s accurate. Maybe some journalists I know could answer it, but for the most part, from what I could gather, most middle or upper class Indians have no desire to speak to poor Indians. They stopped seeing them a long time ago.

I would occasionally see Indians wearing clothes that clearly came from the West, through charities I guess. Oldschool Nike t-shirts! In Ajmer, Rajasthan, I saw a dude who had no shoes and a ragged lungi but wore a t-shirt that said “Bury me in my ones. Nike Air.” Think about that. This dude was not into basketball/hip hop culture. I’ve seen a few poor Indians wearing Wu Tang gear, guys who I suspect have not entered the proverbial 36 chambers.

Let’s chart the life cycle of that t-shirt: Probably originally made in Asia by a worker paid pennies hourly, bought by a North American for $25+, given back to charity maybe just to be nice or perhaps it went out of style or some other reason, back to Asia to a guy who has no clue what Air Force Ones are. The shirt never changes in substance, just its value is inflated like hell in North America because its worth is abstract. In India, it first represented an impossibly low wage, then was a symbol on a man, then fabric on a man. Both are reality, but North American reality is often psychological, existing mostly in the mind. (Of course the shirt has a tangible existence in both places, but it is not valued at $25+ because North Americans value cloth on their body more–signaling “Nike” is the value.)

Being back in Canada, where the value of products is largely abstract, making it susceptible to endless manipulation and inflation by obscenely wealthy and exploitative companies, life seems to be moored to something less real. Psychology understanding of a shirt’s brand is real, but this reality is decadent compared to the tangible desire to cover your body in cloth. My Indian friends and colleagues would kill me if they’re reading this, because I’m not talking about them and Indians hate to be thought of as poor. They have a chip on their shoulder, understandably. The British robbed them blind. At one time, India had 25% of the wealth on Earth.

So as a white guy walking into Delhi, working for an international news station, I immediately had top shelf connections. The world of Indian journalism is small. Like all over the world, only upper and middle class people become journalists. They are the ones who go to college for it, or can afford giving time to work in unpaid internships. Indian news stations don’t have dalits working there. Everyone has worked in every other office, they do the circuit. They all know each other, and the circle is small.

I had done nothing there but arrive, and the country felt insanely open to me. I could travel anywhere, buy anything I wanted in it (not a car or a house, maybe, the latter because there are rules regulating foreigners buying property, and anyway I didn’t have that much money).

On my second day in India I met the premier of Ontario. I has welcomed inside a bunch of embassies. I regularly went to the Press Club and the Foreign Correspondence Club. To be sure the latter two aren’t very exclusive, my then-editor in chief had a membership and we went there to eat cheap kebabs and drink cheap beer and whiskey. One of my hosts worked at the US embassy, and she met David Letterman while I was there. I went to a wedding at the home compound of the President of India. I had a press pass, and cars in Delhi have “press stickers” to say to police and everyone else, “don’t fuck with me or I’ll report you”. There was power. Especially as a white man. And I had done nothing there. I repeat, nothing.

More than access or stories, it’s the way people approached and perceived me that is shocking. I was a sensation. I was one of the only white people to work in my office building, and people treated me with more respect than I deserved. I’m just a guy! Poor and definitely wealthy Indians too enjoy being seen with a white man.

At work, I was able to push back in ways my Indian colleagues were not. It was understood that for all the talk of not having a traditional hierarchy in the office there was still a hierarchy, but I didn’t really give a fuck about that. I wasn’t an asshole, but I resisted being pushed around in ways my colleagues were not able to, I expected the company to live up to the contract it signed and I repeated my expectation to them until they sometimes kinda did, which is an utterly foreign concept in an Indian office. I never called my bosses “sir”.

My existence was enormously sheltered and privileged. Uber is there in Delhi and cheap as hell. Rides within the city are $1 to share, or $2 to ride alone. Plus in my first year, my company paid for every single Uber I took, work-related or not. I took the Metro occasionally, it was about 30 cents a trip. But saving a dollar or two to be crowded and sweaty and have to make up the last mile to and from the metro station with a rickshaw driver who understood no English made no sense.

I’d sometimes pay a rickshaw driver to take me to the metro (subway), or from the metro to where I needed to go. Since the company was paying for my Uber and the metro came from my pocket, it made no sense to take the longer, more expensive and more confusing way. Thus, again, living was easy and sheltered. I’d see people living, sleeping under a flyover from an air conditioned car. This is a trite, packaged image, but I literally did see it everyday.

Weeks after being back, I find I’m surrounded by wealth and abstract/brand cravings, so they people are unsatisfied despite possessing more wealth than most of the world could ever dream of. This sounds like a criticism of these individuals, but really it’s the influence of consumer society, ie mental poison. It drives the rich mad. It’s also something I knew before and everybody knows, and there’s nothing more trite than coming back from India and pointing out the gap between wealth and happiness. Look, India has spiritual people and spiritual frauds all over the place and Toronto has beautiful caring soulful people, poor and wealthy alike. But the hollowness here is palpable and everywhere, and I want to shrug it off but it is so fundamental to the world, the external world and people’s inner life, that I simply despise it.

Returning to Puck after India

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

I feel elated to have hockey back in my life again. Puck was too fundamental to my childhood, adolescence and also adulthood to feel alien now, but a lot has changed.

The feeling of knowing Saturday night will begin again with puck is incredible. But the Leafs are different. They are good! Actually! Being a Leaf fan is to be emotionally fragile about them, and I’m trying not to invest feelings, but having dominant players to root for is a pleasant shock.

In India I didn’t mourn the loss of puck. I was busy and very stimulated and the absence of puck had no impact on my life for the first year. But after about twelve months it was playoffs, and the Leafs were in. I woke up at 3:30 am, lit some charras and watched the best pro hockey I’ve seen in probably 15 years. Matthews. The timing, and the place of it, was strange, but once the puck dropped it was like riding a bike.

I had contacted the Canadian embassy in Delhi to see if I could attend their NHL playoff screening, but they responded that not only couldn’t , no such screening existed. Why even have an embassy, then? They didn’t explain this either. They recommended I buy some Rogers service to stream the game. No, I felt safe from Rogers this far away and refused to let them gouge me, so I streamed it online, which was surprisingly reliable.

In the past, when any regular season let alone playoff game was on, I could be heard screaming abuse at players and refs in a room by myself. The players, too, in the 90s-early 2000s mirrored my insane intensity. They sometimes spat in the face of opposing players face, then jumped in their bench and punched this same face. One major strain of NHL hockey was real sheer burning hatred, and this was released not by outscoring opponents but by beating the shit out of them. This satisfied me, because even if we didn’t win the Cup, and we most certainly didn’t, at least we won a round or two and hurt some rats.

From the bit I’ve seen, NHL hockey has softened enormously and the results are spectacular. A Leaf collided with a Sen last night, and instead of a facewash or chirp or a hack or slash, they each seemed concerned for the other’s well being. Then they just…moved on. Look: the truth is these are obscenely overpaid and obscenely talented kids playing a game they love. What team they play for is arbitrary. It’s a game. I used to think a human being’s character and moral worth was solely determined by what team drafted them–it’s hard to believe I was ever so stupid. (Actually, is it?) Refs now are actually enforcing the rules of hockey, instead of allowing them to be skirted by enforcing The Code of the game, and now hockey games are won by playing hockey. Goonery seems gone, and I don’t miss it a bit.

In India the closest thing I could buy to a hockey stick was a field hockey stick, or what in India is called a “hockey stick.” It was a dinky stupid little thing, but I could stick handle a tennis ball around when aching to play, and this approximation of actual hockey, deeking out inanimate objects, was the closest thing I could find.

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I just returned from playing my first ice hockey game with full equipment, goalies and refs and all, in probably 7 years. And that game was my first in years, too.

I bought real twigs the other day! I told the gentleman at Sport Check I needed help, because the equipment all seemed so new. There were no Easton Aluminums, Koho or Titans. There were no Sakic curves. They’ve been composite for years, but even when I was playing shinny I had a wooden twig. The knowledgeable employee told me things I find incredible. All sticks have very large curves now, no heel curves. “It’s all about the sauce these days.” He means saucer passes, raising the puck on a pass over an opponents’ fore-checking stick so it lands on the other side for a teammate. Skill.

Skates cost between $89-1000 (About 5,000 to 50,000 Rupees!). Skate sharpening now isn’t just sharpening a blade, there are different kind of cuts, with ratios that apparently do mean something to players who can tell the difference. The advances in gear are substantial—sticks/skates are impossibly light, they flex to your foot, skates are protective (if you have money, otherwise break a foot blocking a shot, you poor bastard you deserve a broken foot), the helmets even apparently are better.

At the rink today a sign proclaimed: “Relax, it’s just a game.” This was not the messaging I heard as a kid. Don Cherry taught that the failure to block a shot or forcefully clear the front of the net was a national disgrace. I’m not sure it ever occurred to me that hockey was only a game. There were duties, often semi-violent to violent. I took it oddly seriously as a 12-14 year old, my golden-era as a select player. I was a good house league player until 19, ie mediocre to decent in the actual world.

Today I played with some buddies and had an incredible time. I was gassed halfway through the first (maybe a quarter way), but took some late rushes as a D man, made a few passes, deeked a few people, got burned on some odd man rushes going back (it was not a cerebral lapse, I was pinching because I just didn’t have the juice in my legs to get back and accepted it then and now), and we won 5-2. Their goalie made a few surprisingly good saves on me when I went roof, but I got an apple. I didn’t have my head up with the puck to know where guys were, I felt behind in that respect. But made some good and unexpected passes. And botched some. It was kind of a blur. I couldn’t believe that once ice-time was something I desperately wanted more of. Oh my god. Winning the game was second to making it out alive. 17-15-15 minute periods, stop time and only two full lines. Killer.

But this time a teammate talked about his kids. The parents at my game were not watching from the stands they were on my team. Playing puck as an old bastard is extremely chilled. Our team and the opposing one was not very high-level, but there was definitely talent. There was healthy competition—ie there barely was any. No chirping, body checking, slashing, slew-footing. I was a sub only playing because most of the guys actually on the team had a bachelor party, but I tried not to botch it too bad and hold my own. My commitment wasn’t ferocious. It turns out hockey actually is just a game. This counts as a revelation.

Leafs are good and I just might skate again. Sports isn’t only a con perpetrated by obscenely rich owners who get citizens to buy them stadiums with public money then make tickets affordable only as a business write-off. The pathological profiteering of the Leafs ownership is bearable, and hardly even detectable from TV, when the team is actually run by bona fide hockey guys (Babcock, Shanahan, Lamoriello). I don’t notice the prices because I don’t pay for seats, merchandise, ACC beer or anything. Auston Matthews speaks for himself.

Maybe I’ll regain what wheels I barely had, so if I need to sub in I’ll have some juice for the third. And for shinny too.

I was onto something, surrounding myself as a kid with this game. Having puck in my life again feels wonderful!