No Henry Makepeace this weekend, because, by popular request, I am posting my college paper on the film version of The Maltese Falcon instead. I feel obliged to point out that the assignment was to write a very specific and detailed critique of a film noir film, while assuming that the reader had seen the film, which is why I didn’t go into great detail when discussing the plot. If you haven’t seen the film version lately, I’d recommend it, because it’s pretty good (and also because you might find the following confusing and sometimes hard to follow).

This paper is more or less unedited; there were a few typos which I corrected, and one word where it didn’t belong, which I removed. I found it kind of interesting to compare my current writing style with that of this paper; for example, I don’t use em-dashes nearly as much these days, and not a hint of my current vogue for semicolons can be found here. I should also note that I was not acquainted with the concept of fat acceptance or healthy at any size when I wrote this paper, hence the gibe at the end, which I left in for historical value. Needless to say, this paper should, ahem, not be recycled.

At any rate, without further ado…

The history of the use of props in film is long and complex. The careful dressing of each scene in a film sets the mood, enhances the acting, and creates an air of reality (or unreality, depending on what is desired). The use of smoking as a tool is perhaps not currently in vogue—however, it was used quite extensively in the film noir period.

In an era when smoking is a somewhat less permissible social activity, it is astounding to watch movies from an earlier time in which everyone smoked incessantly and without consideration for those around them. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc., 1941) in particular provides an interesting set of examples of the use of smoking in this period. We see it used as an affirmation of masculinity, to sexualize scenes, and to vilify female characters. Let us first examine the scenes in which smoking occurs.

After the credits, the movie opens on the office of Sam Spade, detective, where he can be seen thoughtfully rolling a cigarette. We are introduced to Spade as a powerful masculine character, and the action moves quickly from there as the female lead walks into his office seeking assistance, introducing herself as “Miss Wonderly”. We can see that Spade is somewhat suspicious as he lights his cigarette while hearing her story of runaway sisters and questionable men.

Spade’s partner, Miles, enters already smoking as the woman implores Spade to place a tail on the man she believes may be subverting her sister. Miles, captivated by her, states that he will do the work himself. Within the next twelve minutes of the film, Miles is killed and we learn that there is a somewhat suspect relationship between Spade and the widow, Iva. We also learn that the man Spade’s partner trailed was murdered as well.

Spade and Iva have a confrontation in his office which becomes quite heated—Iva accuses Spade of murdering Miles in order to marry her. (We have already been informed in a discussion Spade has with Effie, his secretary, that Spade has no intention of continuing his relationship with Iva.) Iva puts on quite a performance with Spade, alternating between accusing him of murdering her husband and begging him to help her.

After this confrontation, Spade begins to roll a cigarette. Here emerges a somewhat bizarre and sexually charged scene. We have seen a conversation between Spade and Effie earlier in which he confides in her much as someone might confide in a man friend—although he calls her “sweetheart” it seems to be a mannerism, rather than a comment she is to take seriously (much as we do not take the clinic nurse seriously when she says “come this way, dear”). Effie seems practical and hard-bitten as Spade himself, so when we see her rolling and lighting Spade’s cigarette in a highly suggestive way, it’s rather odd.

Judging from his earlier confrontation with Iva, perhaps Spade is supposed to be seen as the sort of man who can get any woman he wants and discard her when he pleases. Thus, it might seem a little odd that his secretary hasn’t succumbed to his charms. However, the scene seems awkward and out of place because of his earlier, almost man to man relationship with the secretary. The relationship seems somewhat conflicted later, as well—he trusts her to recover the falcon during the climactic ending, and yet spends other scenes berating her for her stupidity. Effie herself often seems somewhat confused about the way Spade is treating her from moment to moment—in one scene jocose and laughing with her, exchanging confidences over a client, and in another shaking her and telling her “not to faint on him.” This conflict seems to be a reflection of the changing gender roles of the period, as women entered the work force and broke down traditional ideals of family and home.

After this, he runs off to the new hotel room of the female lead, now known as “Miss LeBlanc.” In the confrontation which follows, much is learned about the true mission of “Miss LeBlanc” and her errand in San Francisco. She is there, in theory, to arrange transport for an art object in cahoots with a shady man—hence the request for a tail. She entreats Spade not to mention her when he talks to the police about the death of Miles. When he returns to his office, he rolls a cigarette while on the phone with his lawyer discussing the privacy rights of his client. There is an implication here that the matter Spade is discussing with his lawyer doesn’t merit his full attention, as other in-depth conversations have. During the phone conversation, his secretary presents him with a business card and a smirk—the card smells of gardenia, and, expecting another lovely lady to sashay into his office, Spade agrees to see another member in the growing cast of characters interested in the falcon.

The newest figure is, of course, a man, Joel Cairo, and Spade lights his cigarette as Cairo offers his condolences. Interestingly enough, a somewhat sexual theme emerges in this scene as well—Cairo is played as a very effeminate man, with his gardenia scented toiletries and immaculate dress. The two enter a scuffle when Cairo attempts to search Spade’s office (Spade, of course, smoking all the while—Cairo is clearly not man enough to necessitate an extinguishment of the cigarette). At the end of the fight, Cairo takes something out of his billfold and begins to chew it—perhaps gum, hardly a masculine pursuit.

Almost twelve minutes later, we have another pivotal confrontation scene between Brigid (“Miss LeBlanc” in true form), Cairo, and Spade, where the tangled thread of betrayal surrounding the falcon is unraveled and the law pays a visit. Cairo can be seen in this scene lighting a pre-rolled cigarette—a marked difference from Spade, who clearly prefers to roll his own. After the police and Cairo exit, Spade rolls another cigarette while he attempts to get the truth out of the girl, taking his time about lighting it as well. As in earlier scenes, there is a marked sexual energy to the scene—Brigid calls Spade “wild and unpredictable” and he makes a bit of a joke out of it, repeating it at every instance. The two are very physical as the scene progresses—Brigid uses the couch quite adroitly. The entire scene is saturated with sexuality, and we get a hint that Brigid may not be all sweetness and light. We also see Brigid in the classic foolish girl mode—she doesn’t, apparently, know why the bird is so valuable, though the man who told her to get it certainly did. She also fawns a great deal over Spade, entreating him to help her in throbbing vibrato.

Scarcely three minutes later, we are introduced to another new character while Spade is rolling a cigarette—Wilbur, the gunsel, in the lobby of the Hotel Belvedere. Spade waits to light the cigarette until another character, Luke, the house detective, is brought over to confront the gunsel. It is interesting to note that Spade, being the clever, cynical man that he is, instantly knows that the gunsel among the myriad of other unsavoury characters in the lobby is affiliated with “the fat man,” a figure alluded to in the prior discussion between Cairo, Brigid, and Spade. Spade makes it clear to the gunsel that he wants to see the fat man and no middle man, and the gunsel slinks off, properly chastised by our hero.

In the next scene, Spade climbs the class ladder to light cigars in the his first meeting with the fat man. The two dance about for a bit and finally Spade storms out demanding to be given information about the mysterious bird by five o’clock—come five, we see Spade once again lighting cigars with the fat man in order to learn what he can about the bird and, of course, to be drugged and given a kick in the head by Wilbur. The colluding Cairo is once again smoking one of his pre-rolled cigarettes as the evil trio departs the hotel room.

Cairo is also our next smoker—in the climactic scene where all is revealed and Spade demands that Wilbur be turned into the police to take the responsibility for the shootings (three, now, since the captain on the boat the falcon arrived on is also dead). Cairo lights a cigarette after Spade disarms and knocks out the gunsel. As the tension and the revelations mount, Spade lights another cigarette while the fat man explains the reasons for the shootings. Eventually negotiations are concluded and it is agreed that Spade will deliver the bird in the morning in exchange for ten thousand (advance) and the gunsel. Our next smoker is Brigid, who is seen smoking for the first time on the morning after the bird is delivered. The fat man lights up a cigar when the package arrives (one imagines that the set must have been somewhat odorous by this time).

And, once again, Brigid is seen smoking in the climactic final scene between her and Spade, where she learns that looks can’t get her everywhere and that Spade will, in fact, turn her in for the murder of Miles. Then, the credits roll (surprisingly, no thread of smoke rises from the credits—perhaps this duty was left to the audience).

In the scenes discussed above, we see smoking used in a variety of ways—to sexualize scenes, as a masculine tool, as part of an introduction to new characters, as a vilification, and sometimes as an extension of Spade’s personality.

It was used most abundantly as a masculine tool—smoking was very much a masculine pursuit. We see Spade, the very embodiment of masculinity, lighting up at every opportunity (though, curiously enough, never outdoors). The fat man, a well connected villain, is seen smoking cigars—a step up from Spade’s plebian existence. Curiously enough, we never see the assistants of our rivals smoking—neither Wilbur nor Effie is ever caught in the act. This isn’t surprising for Wilbur, who seems like an odd duck as it is. In fact, the only female character seen smoking is Brigid, and only at the end of the movie, when things are getting tense, and she is revealed as the evil character she is. Iva is apparently too busy aggressively pursuing Spade to go about smoking. We also never see any of the police smoking—the coroner and the visiting officers all are too busy being professional to smoke.

Indeed, smoking seems to be somewhat of a select pursuit. The powerful and in charge (the fat man and Spade) smoke, the somewhat ambiguous third party/henchman (Cairo) smokes, and the evil woman (Brigid) smokes. They also all smoke different things—the fat man prefers his cigars, Cairo prefers his effeminate pre-rolled cigarettes, Spade ruggedly rolls his own, and a guess could be hazarded that Brigid is probably smoking some more ladylike cousin of the cigarette.

And although cigarettes and sexuality are very much entwined in many movies, they are used very interestingly in The Maltese Falcon. The first scene in which we see sexuality and cigarettes mingling is perhaps run of the mill—the secretary perching on the desk, delicately tapping out tobacco, seductively moving the paper along Spade’s lips, rolling and inserting the cigarette, and flirtatiously leaning over to light it. However, the scene seems odd because it contrasts so strongly with Effie’s earlier scenes. And, indeed, all goes downhill from here for poor Effie—her idiotic female side keeps slipping out (when, for example, she loses Brigid on the way home). Brigid, as well, is shown to be an idiotic female in the scene where she admits she doesn’t know the true value of the bird. There is also an interesting sexual interplay when Spade receives Cairo’s card—Effie once again plays a role, handing Spade the card very suggestively. And Spade’s disappointment is seen when he lights the cigarette he’s just rolled as Cairo enters (interestingly enough, we also rarely see Spade lighting up during a tête-à-tête with a female character, save during the opening scene and the scene after the police confrontation).

The scene after the police confrontation is also sexually charged—Spade, alone with Brigid, is trying to get information out of her while she plays coy. The masculine/feminine dynamic is deeply underscored as Spade smokes and she weeps and wails. Spade is strong, Brigid weak. Although there are faint sexual undertones in other smoking scenes, these are surely the strongest examples. There are also firm gender overtones—it is clear that all the women in the movie are meant to be wilting lilies—the cigarettes are one of several tools used to enforce this image: that Brigid smokes and Effie does not presents a clear dichotomy between the two. We also see cigarettes in the conflicted “love scene” at the end, where Spade must make a choice between profession and desire.

We also see smoking in almost every pivotal scene where we meet a new character—Brigid, Cairo, and the fat man are all met with clouds of tobacco, as is the gunsel (Spade, it may be recalled, actually blows a plume of smoke into Wilbur’s face). And, of course, Spade himself is introduced to the audience while smoking. Sometimes the smoking serves as an extension of Spade—when, for example, he first dismisses Cairo’s importance by lighting up a cigarette. In the scene where Spade is speaking with his lawyer, he is seen rolling a cigarette. Yet again, we see Spade thoughtfully rolling a cigarette while he digests new information, as when he is seen smoking while the fat man lays bare the facts. Indeed, the cigarette is a vital part of the role Bogart plays. Bogart uses cigarettes very well as an acting tool.

Finally, we see cigarettes in the vilification of one character, Brigid. For those of us who grew frankly annoyed with her simpering scenes, it was a great pleasure to learn that she was not on the side of good. However, it is interesting that she didn’t start smoking until she was firmly established as a murderess. Mary Astor didn’t use her cigarettes as effectively as Bogart did—although she probably could have found a number of ways to make her cigarette a more vital part of newly revealed evil character in the final scene, it instead hung limply from her fingers.

Much as costumes and other props are carefully considered and used with clear intent, smoking is a vital part of The Maltese Falcon. Smoking, indeed, is vital for the sort of character that Spade portrayed—without his thoughtfully rolled cigarettes, it wouldn’t be The Maltese Falcon. It can be seen that cigarettes played heavily in the gender roles of the film noir characters, and as an extension of the change in gender roles seen during this period. It is also interesting to observe so much indoor smoking in a city (San Francisco) where such behaviour is greatly frowned upon nowadays. Perhaps the fat man was not aware of the dual cancer risks posed by being overweight and smoking.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering, I received an A for this paper. Make of that what you will.

The rule at the utility company was that they would run utility poles along the road for free, but if you had an especially long driveway, you had to pay for the poles along your driveway. They would be delivered in a big stack at the head of the drive, and then you had to either pay the utility company to install them, or pay the only electrician licensed to install utility poles, who happened to also work for the power company. However, he charged less for jobs on the side, so most people were willing to tolerate the slow pace of work between official jobs.

Getting electricity, for most of us, was therefore A Big Deal, because power poles and installation do not come cheap. As a result, the community had an unspoken and complex arrangement. As electricity slowly creeped up the road, when a house formally declared the intent to get utility poles installed, the neighbors up the road who didn’t have electricity would help pay for the installation and the major appliances. In return, they got the right to use the washer, bake bread in the oven, and so forth. When a household which had loaned you money got electricity, you repaid their loan, providing them with a little chunk of change, and thereby slowly paying back your debt over time.

This arrangement might sound strange to many people, but most of us were in and out of each other’s homes already, so it didn’t strike any of us as peculiar. And the sharing of the expense made the slow spread of electricity up the road possible. People weren’t obligated to participate, of course; some people simply weren’t interested, and no one would push them.

The other big part of getting electricity was, of course, the wiring of your house. Most people did the wiring before the utility poles were installed, because it was a project that could be worked on in fits and starts for months, and that way the house would be ready to roll when the power line was finally brought to the house.

I still remember the day the utility poles were delivered, mainly because they were dumped in the driveway, requiring us to run to the neighbors for help with moving them. We ended up just dragging them down the road, roughly to the points where they were meant to be installed, and when the electrician arrived, we watched intently as he rigged up an ingenious pulley to haul them into place. Once all the power poles were up, he told us that the utility company would come and lay the line soon, and trundled off in his electric company truck, which he wasn’t really supposed to use for side jobs.

The night after the power line was laid, we had an electricity party, inviting all the neighbors over for pizza, which we of course baked in our wood-fired brick oven in the orchard. My father, as I recall, added an incendiary amount of peppers to the pizzas, causing the neighbors to attempt to put the fire on their tastebuds out with copious amounts of wine. The laughter rang out through the orchard as the candles flickered, and people strummed musical instruments and sang snatches of song.

My father had planned the inaguarual use of our electricity with care. He thought about simply flicking the lights on at dusk, but he decided that it lacked flair. Instead, he trundled into town and returned with a top of the line record player and a formidable set of speakers, and when the party started to flag, Maria Callas singing La Traviata rang out through the trees, creating at first a sudden hush and then an excited chatter as my father turned all of our four lights on, one by one.

He was a greedy sort of man, not in a cold way, but in the way where he wanted to grasp anything and everything related to life, and never let it go. He particularly adored food of all stripes, and the weeks I spent in that house, I ate better than I have at almost any other time in my life. We would usually eat outside on the patio, in the midst of the grapes, the air smoky and earthy from the summer heat.

“Life is too short,” he would say, “for bad food,” and I would smile shyly and heap whatever was on offer onto my plate. He would nod approvingly as I ate, both of us isolated by lack of a common language, yet brought together by a passion for food. Occasionally, through a series of gestures, we would communicate some vital piece of information, like how to tease mussels out of their shells without making a mess.

One day, we went for a walk, and he pointed at the big fig tree at the bottom of the drive and grinned, because it was covered in figs. We harvested as many as we could, cramming them into our mouths and stuffing others into the market bags we had brought with us, because we had been walking to the market. There are few things in this world as excellent as figs, and when we walked back to the house, our mouths were smeared with dark purple juice, and I was thirsty, so I drank two pitchers of water in quick succession and then sat in the garden to read.

In the cool of the house, he ate figs and practiced his mandolin, and it wasn’t until later that the trouble really began. Perhaps it was just a small rumbling at first, but it very quickly cascaded into a serious situation which almost incapacitated the toilet. I ran down the drive for assistance, rapidly realizing that this went beyond the scope of our meager communication skills, and returned with the stout grandmother down the road who raised bunnies.

She promptly took charge of the situation, clucking under her breath that everyone knows you must drink lots of water with figs. By the next morning, he was well enough to sit out weakly on the patio drinking coffee, and the day after that, he was fully functional, disappearing from the house early on an unknown errand.

The next day, we walked down the drive again, to bring some sweets to the grandmother as a way of thanks, and the fig tree was gone, neatly decapitated and dismembered, leaves littering the ground along with the crushed juicy bodies of plump figs. I looked at the tree, and then at him, and he smiled slyly and put his finger, stained with sap and purple juice, to his lips.

I breezed into the post office, thinking about nothing in particular, and opened my box to find a single piece of mail, one of those obnoxious solicitation letters that tries to masquerade as real mail. Since am I fact a California driver at PO Box 2764, I was deceived into opening it, and then muttered a muffled cry of disgust when I realized it was just an attempt to sell me car insurance, which might have been useful if I owned a car.

An older woman, neatly dressed, was sorting mail right next to the recycling bin, so I sort of leaned around her to toss the crumbled wedge of paper into the recycling, when it happened. The fart.

It was unmistakable, mainly because it was right in my face. “PHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHBT” said the woman’s butt. The woman apparently decided that the best course of action would be to pretend it didn’t happened, so she started stolidly at the wall while she sorted her mail.

“Woah,” I said, kind of softly, dropping the mail into the bin. The woman continued to stare at the wall, while the sides of my mouth quirked up, and I dashed out the door. I made it to the top of the stairs before I burst into laughter which was so all-consuming and painful that I thought I was going to have an asthma attack. While I wheezed and teared at the top of the stairs, post office patrons flowed around me, under the assumption that I was clearly crazy, and would go away soon.

When I managed to haul my gasping way down the stairs and look back, the woman was still standing there, still sorting her mail, with nary a wrinkle in her expression to betray her emotions. I tried to get myself under control as I walked down the street, but I had a rough time, and every now and then I would burst into hooting laughter (which will be familiar to those who know me in person, and have experienced the full force of a laughter explosion from the depths of my twisted soul).

“Hee hee hee hee,” I would say, “ho ho ho ho, heeeeeeeee,” while tourists looked nervous and gave me a wide berth. “Hah,” I would spurt out, before wheezing for a moment. “Ah ah aha ah.”

I can only hope that she came home and said “you know, the funniest thing happened at the post office today…”

When I moved into my very first apartment, teetering above the alley between Franklin and Laurel Streets, I had pretty limited furniture. A desk, a bed. A kitchen table. One rickety chair bequeathed from a friend, and a couch. The chair situation was probably my most dire problem, as chairs are pretty vital and necessary pieces of furniture. Guests sit on them, you stand on them to hang high artwork, you sit on them when you eat at the table…they’re just necessary.

Over time, people became aware of the fact that I needed chairs, and they started trickling in, bit by bit. Two of the Czechoslovakian folding chairs from my father’s house, so fragile that you needed to sit on them very precisely and avoid breathing. One hall tree. A few standard kitchen chairs. A decaying wingback. At one point, I had 22 chairs, which stuffed the house so thoroughly that it was like a gauntlet, and the chairs became sort of a running joke.

They just kept coming, and coming, and coming. And finally they stopped arriving, and I sifted through them, kept the ones I liked, and bequeathed the rest to goodwill. I brought the chairs with me when I moved, and then when I moved to San Francisco, I left most of them at my father’s house, or in storage in my old house, because Puff already had chairs, and it seemed silly to start the multiplication of the chairs all over again.

So, when I moved back home, I had, again, no chairs, except for Mr. Bell’s armchair. And because someone was now living in my old house, I couldn’t exactly nip back and retrieve my furniture. (And other goods left in storage there.)

This house is much smaller, so it’s probably good that I don’t have chairs, but now the parade of stools has begun. When I moved in, I had two stools, both of which I had used as stands to hold various objects in the old house. And there was a stool waiting for me, which I kept because I eat at a little counter by the door, and it was roughly the right height.

However, it was a real pain when guests came over, especially when I invited more than two people to dinner, because one of the stools was too frail to really sit on, and the stool that came with the house was crappy, so usually someone would end up sitting on the ball, which wasn’t very comfortable. So I picked up a couple more stools at Rossi’s, bringing the total stool population to five: three at the counter, one in my bedroom, where it stands in as a lamp table, and one frail rickety inherited stool which I stashed in the loft.

Then, Loki broke the ball, so I have nothing to use at my desk. And I decided to replace my desk with something smaller, and ended up with a high table which came with two stools. I think I have officially crossed the line into the house of stools from the house of chairs, and it’s all my fault. At this point, I’m hoping I don’t work my way up to 22 again. I seem to be cursed with a fate of excess seating, which is especially ironic since I so rarely entertain.

What will it be in my next house, I wonder. Couches?

The other day, I was reading on the porch in the sun and looking out into the garden, and I thought to myself that what I really need is a giant tub of fish, dug into the ground so that the rim is almost at dirt level. We used to keep fish in the water troughs in Elk, and I could never figure out how the animals didn’t eat them by accident while drinking, but they didn’t, because the fish got huge.

And then I started thinking that if I seriously wanted a little pool of fish, I would need to think about how to protect them from the neighborhood cats and birds, which would pretty much regard that sort of thing as an open-season all-hours buffet. And then, for some reason, I remembered the Day the Fish Died.

When we lived in Caspar, my father and I, for a time, kept fish. Mostly goldfish, as I recall, in a big aquarium which was later the scene of the Great Frog Debacle (a story for another day…if you ask nicely). We also kept parakeets and finches, which were much more of a pain in the ass than the fish, and I think my father was a big fan of the fish. I was too. Fish are pretty cool, you know, even if you can’t really interact with them most of the time. (Except for tame koi. Tame koi are cool.)

At any rate, one time I went away somewhere for a few days in the summer, and my father decided, while I was gone, that the fishtank needed to be cleaned. This was probably true, because we tended to let it go awhile between cleanings, due to the water shortage issue. (And apparently goldfish actually like dirty water better, so we were doing them a favor.)

My father duly cleaned the fishtank, using a few drops of bleach as he scrubbed, like he usually did, and rinsing it before filling it and putting the fish back in. When I came home the next day, he mentioned that he had cleaned the tank, and we both trouped into the side room to look at the results, and…

…well, you may be able to guess what had happened. Concerned about water use, my father did not rinse the fishtank out as well as he usually did, and as a result, there was some bleach residue in the tank. So the goldfish were very very dead, except for one which was still swimming around drunkenly with bits of its scales peeling off.

We both felt very bad, and those were the last fish we kept. We ended up giving them a Viking funeral at the beach, I think to atone for my father’s sin, and I suspect that he remembers the Day the Fish Died as vividly as I do.

For some reason, this incident from my past has been skulking at the corners of my mind over the last week or so, although it’s hard to say what, precisely, dredged this memory up from wherever it had been hiding. It sometimes seems like these strange images of the past just appear, for no apparent reason and with no real lesson in mind. They’re just sort of there.

Living in Molybos, one sort of came to know everybody else, and therefore, most of the town showed up for major events like christenings, weddings, and funerals. Funerals were announced with a dolorous clanging of bells, and people would wind their way through the city to the church for an interminable service, and then dutifully follow the coffin to the graveyard and watch while it was interred.

Unlike in the United States, where funerals are a tasteful, refined, quiet affair for the most part, Greek funerals were as noisy and colourful as the rest of Greek life. Members of the procession would weep and wail whether or not they knew the deceased, with the female family members of the deceased weeping more than anyone else, rending their black clothing and smearing their faces with dirt and ash. Before the coffin was interred, women might throw themselves upon it to be pulled away by their family members, and after the burial, the women would return to the grave every day to tend it, keep the memorial candle burning, and talk to the dead.

On Saturdays especially, the graveyard filled with women in black who would sit and talk with one another while tidying the graves, and periodically there would be an exhumation, which would also be attended by most of the community, as we waited to see whether or not the bones had been stripped clean as they were laid out on the traditional white cloth before being bundled into an ossuary. Some superstitious Greeks believed that the condition of the bones after the three year wait for exhumation was an indicator of the character of the deceased; good people would obligingly decay away into neat skeletons, while the less virtuous would still have clumps of stringy hair and papery skin which would necessitate reburial.

For some reason, in this memory I have a strong feeling that the cemetery was on a hill, which would make sense, since there’s no good reason to locate a cemetery on land which could be farmed. I remember a forest of headstones and rocks and gnarled shrubs, and I remember threading our way along with the rest of the village to the yawning grave, presided over by the priest.

What makes this funeral more remarkable than the others is the identity of the chief mourner: the butcher. The butcher was a terrifyingly large man who could immobilize a thrashing cow with one muscular arm, and he had long been a subject of fascination for myself and my German friend, Anna. We would skulk around the corner to watch him at work, efficiently hacking up poultry and livestock, and we were fans of his gigantic pig, who would lazily wallow to the fence to accept kitchen scraps from us.

The butcher was a fairly taciturn sort of man with a coarse voice and a common accent, and it was not unusual for transactions to pass in almost total silence, in marked contrast to the normally voluble commerce of the Greeks. He was simply a man who knew his business, and wasn’t that interested in discussions.

At this funeral, I was not the only one astonished when the dirt began to clod onto the coffin and the butcher started to sing in an eerily high, ethereal sort of voice, a lament that pierced your heart, pinning it to the back of your spine as you stood frozen in awe. For a man who rarely spoke to suddenly burst out in any sort of song would have been remarkable, but it was all the more astonishing for its haunting beauty and purity, the sort of sound which you hear and realize that you will never hear again. Like most Greek mourning songs, it was a tune that was invented as the song was sung, and the words were spontaneous and without calculation, and it captured the depth of his bitter sadness and the spirit of the deceased. While he sang, the other mourners fell silent, and even the priest stood still, the incense censer idly twirling from his hand.

At the end of the song, he left, silently, while everyone else stood stunned at the edges of the grave. I cannot remember who it was that died, if I ever knew, but even now I marvel at the depth of feeling conveyed by the butcher on that bitter day.

So, I went to the Neighborhood Watch meeting tonight, mainly because Tristan said that I should, and because I figure if I want to get the rest of the neighborhood to band together to start a violent revolution, I’d better meet them all.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten how much I loathe meetings. My friend David was there for the first half, and we entertained each other, but then he fled, using meatloaf as an excuse, and I suffered alone through the agony.

I was going to give an entertaining and pithy blow-by-blow of the madness, but, honestly, I think I will let my notebook speak for itself:

Click through for the full version, including explanatory notes.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I thought I would tell this story, because it’s pretty darn funny, and it may be one of my favourite stories about my father the party animal. I was just going to include the story in the post, but it’s too excellent to bundled in with a serious discussion on the macabre doings at the Times, so I decided to wait.

At any rate, this story dates back to when I was living in Oakland, and my father visited me for a few days. On his first day there, we were supposed to meet an old friend in Berkeley for dinner, and I suggested taking BART, because parking in Berkeley is a real pain in the butt. So we duly headed to the BART station, and hopped a train, which was moderately full, it being roughly rush hour.

We talked about this and that on the way over, and eventually the topic of his garden came up, and he mentioned that he had really been struggling with the deer. His landlady, who lives up the road, has a really nice eight foot deer fence which keeps them at bay, so they stroll over to his house and chow down on his vegetables, which is really annoying. He can’t afford to put a fence up, and thus he’s resorted to all kinds of shenanigans to keep the deer at bay, but they just keep coming back.

Therefore, when my father spotted a pellet gun on sale at the store, he decided to buy it, with the intent of firing it roughly in the direction of the deer to scare them off. He had mentioned the acquisition a few weeks ago, and I asked him how things were going with the pellet gun plan.

“Oh,” he said, “the best thing happened the other day. There was this deer in the yard, with that insolent expression, headed right for the cabbages, and I got the pellet gun, and the window was open, so I could just sneak the barrel outside and aim right at him, and he kept just chewing and wriggling his little ears…”

At this point, the train fell silent, for no apparent reason, but neither of us was really aware that all conversation had ceased. I’m sure this has happened to you at some point; you’re having an awkward conversation in a crowded place, and for some reason everyone gets very quiet just in time for the worst possible phrase to be shouted at the top of your lungs.

“So,” my father continued. “I shot the fucker right in the ass! That’s what you get for coming into my yard!”

A young black man the next seat over visibly flinched when my father started raving about shooting things in the ass, since he obviously hadn’t heard the first part of the story, and even I jumped in my seat a little, because my father was so filled with delight and rage and passion that he seemed to visibly grow. We both have a tendency to get a little voluble when we’re over-excited, and I can see why it intimidates people, because we start flailing our arms around, and our eyes twinkle, and we get really loud.

“And then,” he said, with the whole train hanging unabashedly on every word at this point, “the little bastard ran off into the forest, twitching his little tail, and I opened the window a little wider and shouted ’so, how do you like THAT!’”

With the payoff, the train settled back into the quiet hum of normal conversation, and my father shrank back to his normal size, but that moment, frozen there in the train with everyone staring at us with astonishment, will live on forever in my mind.

I realized this morning that today marks the year anniversary since I moved into my new house, which means that I have been back in town for around a year as well. How time flies, I tell you what. Anyway, I happened to be watering the garden when I came to this realization, so I thought, what better a way to illustrate the changes a year can make than to post some pictures of the garden?

Here’s my front door roughly a year ago, taken with my cellphone.

Well, ok, not a lot of change there, I grant you, although I did get rid of the awful lace curtain.

Here’s the infamous trench.

And here’s the same spot, a year later. The gate moved, did you notice? Also, I am not responsible for the picket fence. Not. Responsible. Got it?

Here’s a view to the north…

And the same view, today. Do you like my hose snake?

Here’s a kinda easterly view from last year.

And a slightly different angle on the same view from today.

I don’t know about you, but I think that things look a heck of a lot better. Not just because they’re taken with a real camera.

I’m glad to be back home again; it’s hard to believe I’ve been back a year already!