The Past Is Never Dead

Vancouver Island, September 2005

Publishing History

Late in December 1987 (yes, that 1987, the one more than thirty years ago) I made a deal with my friends the Jewinskis that I would write them two letters a month during 1988 and, at the end of that year, we would compile, edit and publish the letters. 

This was not to be mere art for art's sake. No. Those letters would become a best-seller and the proceeds would finance the establishment, with me as the founding editor, of a Canadian humour magazine called The Minute.

Certainly sounds plausible.

I wrote one letter a month (half of the promised output) until June. Then I got a new job at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and was so distracted by office politics and drinking with my co-workers, that I forgot the deal. I didn't write again until December.

The reality of a paying job blew away all my publishing ambitions.

But I kept writing to the Jewinskis. And they kept more than fifty of the letters I sent them between 1982 and 2000.

Late last year, they sent the letters back. They were downsizing from their 3,000 sq ft farmhouse in St. Clements to a 485 sq ft condo in downtown Toronto. 

I've gone though all the letters. Reliving the '80s and law school was more embarrassing and painful than I'd have guessed.  But, some parts of some of the letters met the promise of the original deal.

This is from May 1988, describing a trip to New York Bruce and I took to visit a friend:

We sat one night in a bar called Icabod's and drank $100 worth of fancy drinks, smoking incessantly, talking and talking and talking. It was wonderful: that sort of flat-bottomed pleasure that comes when you feel as though you've hit a pocket of timelessness. You keep on drinking but never get too drunk; you keep on talking but there's always more to say; you keep on smoking but the pack never runs out.

What happens first is the cigarettes run out, then the bar closes and you realize you're tired and you want to go home, but in a happy sated state, slightly weary, but still buzzing with the energy from the conversation.

There are others - like the letter from October 1997 describing what it was like to be a smoker in a world increasingly unaccommodating of same - but I'll save those for later posts.  

Hip-Gnosis

I visited my orthopaedic surgeon on Friday, just to get an x-ray and tell him about the strange interlude from the 17th to the 29th of January. He'd never heard of anything like it. The x-ray showed my hip was exactly the same as it was in 2017 and 2016. He said there was nothing wrong that he could see. So I'm good.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

New York, November 2010