Bob Dylan — Nobel Laureate?

Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  I’m not sure what to think about this.  It’s difficult for me to be objective about Bob Dylan.  So much stuff gets in the road.  I remember Bob when he and I were both kids, so there’s a lot of old man nostalgia going on — and my hindsight isn’t even close to 20/20.  I’m not suggesting he shouldn’t have won  — poetry shouldn’t be confined to the rhyming couplet and the quill pen.  Singer/songwriters are still writers, after all, and of all the Rod McKuens, Leonard Cohens and Joni Mitchells my generation produced, no one deserves a Nobel Prize more than Bob Dylan.  But I can’t help thinking that if he’d been toiling away with pen and paper instead of guitar and harmonica — well — regardless of how good Bob Dylan really is, I’m not sure The Swedish Academy would have come calling.

But here is the music with the lyrics — you decide.  And then I’ll let Joan Baez speak for me because, like her, if the Nobel Prize people are offering me nostalgia — I’ve already paid.

 

Life Hacks: A Personal Journey

lifehacksI’m not in love with Martha Stewart or anything (that would be weird) but I’m a total sucker for Life Hacks — those simple little strategies that would organize my life.  For example, if you pin your socks together when you wash them, the dryer won’t eat one — plus they’re already sorted and ready to go back into the sock drawer when they’re dry.  This is a brilliant time saver.  Full disclosure: I don’t pin my socks together — doing laundry is a big enough pain in the ass without dickin’ around with pins and socks.  However, I know in my soul that if I did pin my socks together, my life would be way better.

And this sock situation is just the tip of the iceberg.  I know there are thousands of people who take the time to place their electrical cords neatly in toilet rolls — for easy and convenient storage.  They’ve colour-coded their closet to simplify their morning routine.  They keep their pasta in brightly-labelled Pringles™ containers and have a pre-printed itemized grocery list tacked to a bulletin board they made from used wine corks.  These are the people who show up for work in a re-purposed wardrobe, looking as if they just escaped from GQ magazine.  They have a 12 grain healthy lunch they made the night before and a dozen hand-decorated cupcakes to share.  They keep all their business junk in a cute little tote made from old ice cube trays and can find three different sizes of paper clips at a moment’s notice.  I could be one of those people.  I really could.

The problem is I never remember to save my old toilet rolls, or Pringles™ containers or any of the other bits of useless crap these Life Hackers are always using.  I don’t have a handy supply of tacks, staples, string, wire, old picture frames, fabric, wool or canvas.  I don’t have pinking shears, a sewing machine or a grommet maker, and I haven’t spent enough quality time with a hot glue gun to do more than glue my fingers together.  Let’s face it, Life Hacking is an expensive proposition that takes a lot of time, effort and planning.  So even though I know my salvation runs through toilet roll Purgatory, the fact is I’m too broke and too damn busy to actually get organized.

My Sisters Were Wizards

When I was a kid, my sisters were wizards.  They had magic words that could turn a pillow-high, cozy warm brass bed into the March family living room.  They had incantations that produced beautiful horses, stinking French sewers and one sad little dog named Greyfriars Bobby.  They could conjure people and places at will, and on one occasion, they harnessed the wind from a stay-home-from-school bitter Saskatchewan storm to propel our ships out of danger.  They cast spells that bewitched me so completely that, long before I was allowed to cross the street by myself, I could travel through the puny barriers of time and space with ease.  And it was there that my sisters abracadabra-ed their friends for me — Black Beauty, Travis and his dog Yeller, Hans Brinker and the queen of long, lazy summer afternoons, Nancy Drew.

sisters1

The source of my sisters’ sorcery was the Mayfair Public Library.  It was a cavernous basement with high little citadel windows and dim, humming electric light.  It was a place of holy quiet, brown with wisdom and heavy with wooden shelves.  It was guarded by ferocious matrons in sensible shoes.  They kept their eyes on little boys who might be loud — or sticky — but, by then, I knew how powerful and precious books were, so I sat quietly and kept my eye on them.  I remember thinking, “I’m a little boy now, but someday… someday, I will decipher your runes and, like Lochinvar,* I’ll come and I’ll take what I want and know your magic for myself.”  I knew I would do this.  I knew it because my sisters were never jealous witches, concealing their art.  Tired of me pestering them to read to me, they were already showing me that the tiny symbols in the books made sounds and the sounds made words — and the words, taken together, made power.

Today I am a wizard.  I have spent a lifetime studying the alchemy of words — reading and writing them.  I still smile when they are used well in delightful new combinations and still cry when they are abused.  I will never tire of their wonder.  I do this because once upon a time, in a time that doesn’t exist anymore, five magical sisters loved their little brother so much they taught him how to read.

*My sisters knew Lochinvar personally and, two years in a row, two different sisters memorized his adventures — so I did, as well.   Even now, I still have a stanza or two.