“If our life did not fade and vanish like the dews of Adashino’s grave or the drifting smoke from Toribe’s burning grounds, but lingered on forever, how little the world would move us. It is the ephemeral nature of things that makes them wonderful.
Why cling to life which cannot last forever only to arrive at an ugly old age. It is most seemly to die before forty at the latest.
Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?
“The elegant thing is for a lover to wander aimlessly hither and yon, drenched with the frosts or dews of night, tormented by the fears of his parents’ reproaches and the censure of the world, the heart beset with uncertainties, yet for all that sleeping alone often, though always fitfully.
On the other hand, he shouldn’t lose himself to love too thoroughly or gain the reputation of being putty in women’s hands.”
Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?
“Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle, (as it generally is in the pulpit, and at the Old Bailey) and that I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it, that is in relation to good taste.”
Thomas de Quincey, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”, 1827.
“People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed-a knife-a purse-and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature.”
Thomas de Quincey, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”, 1827.
TALES FROM MY HOOD: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF ‘CRIME”!
We are on a bit of a “crime roll” here so let’s move from horrific to humorous.
A few years ago when Dylan the Westie was the Westie of the house there lived B and W, backyard neighbours of Fay and Bob. W and B were heading up to their family cottage near Ottawa for a long weekend. W asked Bob to keep an eye on the house and if necessary, alert the police if there was any suspicious activity. No one was expected at the house. At the time there were a few break and enters in the hood.
At 21:00 hours Bob is in the kitchen and he looks at W and B’s kitchen and sees a man in an undershirt drinking a bottle of beer. He was unable to contact W and B so made the call to Toronto Police Services (TPS) to inform them of the “criminal in the kitchen”. With the utmost sense of urgency they show up at W and B’s house 3 hours after my call to them and confront the criminal.
The criminal happened to be B’s brother who had a key to the house and unexpectedly showed up for a cold beer and to watch a bit of television. TPS did, according to W, grill the hell out of the “criminal” and determined he was not a criminal but an unannounced house guest!
TALES FROM MY HOOD: DOUBLE MURDER AND SUICIDE BY AN UNUSUAL MURDERESS
Bob told me one of the great literary influences of his life has been the lurid and sensational “Allo Police” reeking with screaming headlines published in Montreal and now long gone. Sensational and grisly photos particularly murder victims. Rape, assaults, bank robberies, drugs, gangs of the lowest roustabouts even worse than what you see on “90 Day Finance” or its 98 spinoffs. It made his once hometown of Montreal look like the fiery pits of hell, politics aside. No hebetude when reading “Allo Police”!
When I tell you this Tale From My Hood perhaps that “Allo Police” yellow lumpenproletarian journalism has rubbed off on me.
The old guard of the hood mention this awful twenty year old occurrence. About a 10-minute walk from here there lived a 37-year-old psychiatrist Suzanne Killinger-Johnson with her husband and two children. Yes, a psychiatrist can be mentally disturbed. This lady took her six-month-old son Cuyler and jumped in the path of a subway train. Cuyler died on impact while mother lingered for a few days before succumbing to her injuries. The murder suicide shook Toronto to its roots and I can see it still rattles the old guard when they talk about it while us dogs’ nose around.
Bob drives by her house and I hear him occasionally mutter……..
“…suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay could have smote him with more seeming malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations.”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
RORY DYLAN STEPHEN AND TIGER WOODS PICKED UP ON DUI CHARGE!
Much to my humiliation I was picked up today after a DUI!
You may have heard the great golfer Tiger Woods was also recently picked up on a DUI. I have watched this event unfold over the past day or two. Bloated and puffy remarked Bob looking like that rock n roller Jim Morrison before his death in Paris. Can’t be good Bob sighed! Good news…just heard he is seeking treatment
Tiger found with pills in his pocket it seems. Poor guy in pain from his previous DUI rollovers and surgeries? Whatever. Not such a good reason for premature death.
I am neither a rock n roller, actor or a degenerate of any sort but today I was picked up on a DUI.
Let me clarify, Tiger’s DUI is “Driving Under the Influence”. My DUI is “Diarrhea Under the Influence”. As par for the course (pun intended) I gobbled up something that dropped on the kitchen floor and it didn’t agree with me. A fierce gurgling ensued followed by some nasty gas so Bob had to quickly charge toward me to pick me up and quickly place me outside for a watery event. Whatever I ate it was not a good influence on me!
I wonder if Tiger would have preferred my DUI over his?
“Aye, aye!, it was that accursed white whale that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye.” he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob like that of a heart-stricken moose. Aye, aye! It was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! And I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what you shipped for men! To chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
TALES FROM MY HOOD: Murder!
We reside in a quiet neighbourhood. Lots of trees. Big homes. A midtown oasis but we are not without a lurid tale or two. Naughty people (not naughty puppies) break into homes and steal cars every once and awhile but violent crime is an extreme rarity. Perhaps the greatest act of evil are dogwalkers slipping poop bags into garden waste bags on the curb.
Bob and I occasionally walk by a home (about 11 minutes by foot) with hedges surrounding it. Bob tells me he and Fay were returning from our Godfather’s, (Mr. G), a couple of years ago and they noticed a Toronto Police Services Van with “FORENSICS” written on it.
News gradually filtered out that it was the son of a widower that murdered his father! The son was mentally disturbed Bob said. A few neighbours Bob and Dylan the Westie had met on their walks remarked there were often violent quarrels between son and father. The daughter has recently moved in we are told.
Bob never really engaged with the deceased as he had a German Shepperd and Bob and such dogs do not mix well especially after Dylan and Bob were attacked by another German Shepperd you read about in an earlier chapter.
As Bob says dog walking really has you dialed into the heart of the neighborhood. Occasionally even in Paradise troubling clouds can pass overhead!
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