Chapter Five - Part One.
I've often felt too small, especially when I was a teenager. At school or in the street, many men and some women towered over me. To-day I stand fully grown at five feet six inches or 1.65 metres high. I wanted to be bigger, stronger and tougher. In my late teens I took up weight training. As a result, my weight ballooned from 135 pounds to close to 175. I didn't grow up. I grew out.
Yet my weight training alas, damaged my legs. I pumped out repetitions with weights for my arms, legs, shoulders and chest. Yet my knees took the bruunt of damage from lifting weights.
At the local Y.M.C.A. weight room on Burrard Street I sweated while trying to pump up my thighs. I would hold a weight on my shoulders while bending my knees. I did this while the heels of my shoes rested on a plank of wood.
"You're going to kill your knees doing this," one of the many weight lifters at the Y.M.C.A. gym told me. "I'd stop doing that if I was you."
I ignored this advice. All through the 1960's to the mid-1970's, I kept squatting with weights while my heels rested on a wooden block. To make matters worse, in 1974 I took up jogging. John was a tall muscular brown haired 40- something man I met in the 'Y' weight training gym on Burrard Street. He would lift weights and then work out on the gymnastic bars in a gym upstairs from the weight room. The weight room sat in the 'Y' building's basement.
I saw John do jogging too. So then I took up jogging. Meanwhile I would often run into John when he would stalk back downstairs into a tiny room beside the weight room. Here. a huge punching bag hung from this small room's ceiling. John would then punch this bag with a manic intensity, sometimes for over half an hour at a time. His sweaty smell soon filled up the room which had no windows.
I looked on at John's punching workouts, half-fascinated, half-repelled. "That John is not a bad guy," another weight trainer told me. "But sometimes I've seen him act kind of strange." I ignored this comment and became friends with John who was then in his mid 40's. A former logger and construction worker, he lived in a tiny basement room not far from where I lived in Kitsilano.
"You and me are just fig leafers," John said about his and mine weight training. "We're just trying to look good. We're not tough." And as he said the word "tough" his face would sometimes shake to emphasize the word. I kept on jogging though I couldn't keep up with John in his jogging workouts. I was truly hurting my knees by jogging and doing squats in my peculiar way. I was heading for a fall. It came soon enough.
Wednesday, 17 August 2016
Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Exits and Entrances: A Journey Through Many Landscapes. Chapter Four, Part Three.
Chapter Four, Part Three.
My father was a true eccentric as well as being an Orthodox Jew. He didn't wear sideburns like the truly Orthodox. Still, he believed in just about every word in the Old Testament. I stayed with my father for about eight years off and on, after my mother and sister passed away. During this time my father threw himself into the affairs of the Orthodox synagogue, the Schara Tzedeck. Here my father caused all sorts of problems while doing some good things too.
He tried to get rid of non-Jewish people who were members of the Jewish Community Centre at 41st Avenue and Oak street. If he had succeeded, the community centre would have gone bankrupt. He demanded that all Jewish restaurants serve only kosher food. "You're father is impossible to work with," one woman told me. "He's crazy about kosher food."
I should have left my father's high rise long before I eventually did. Finally I moved into a tiny one bedroom place on the west side of Kitsilano. But I was a mess. "That man is still fighting his father," one woman, who I worked with at one time, said about me. She was right.
In fact I became the opposite of my dad. He was an Orthodox Jew. I became a liberal Christian. He was a married man. I never married. He ran after the rich and the well-to-do. I became at one time a hard core socialist and worked with the truly poor. He could never save any money. "Your father is a cash addict," another woman I knew told me. I became a real cheapskate who could save a money even at times when I lived on welfare.
There were other opposites in our lives. My father worked from the age of 13 to the day he retired at 78. I worked a total of about 11 years. Last, my father was a good athlete who played a good game of soccer and won many medals on the track in the 100 and 200 yard races. He was a star at what was called 'the county level' in the U.K., which was like our provincial level in Canada. I, on the other hand was hopeless in sports. I couldn't catch a baseball or throw a football.
Yet I could swim which I was still doing in my early 70's. My father never learned that skill. And there must have been other ways that I differed sharply from my father. I can't think of them now, but they surely existed. Yet up until the age of 35 or so, in my character I was very like my father. Like him, I was brash and abusive, and caused problems, whatever organization I joined.
Once I ended up in this tiny suite in Kitsilano I continued my disruptive path. Now at times massive rages overcame me and then sadness settled in my brain. I wanted to cry but couldn't. I kept on taking valium and abusing women. Then in late 1974, I contracted chomdromalacia, or a roughening of the kneecaps. My knees swelled up and I could only walk now with the help of crutches.
What would I do, I wondered. How would I survive? Then suddenly a rescuer came into view.
Yet before he showed up, I had detoured into weight training that made me need him even more.
My father was a true eccentric as well as being an Orthodox Jew. He didn't wear sideburns like the truly Orthodox. Still, he believed in just about every word in the Old Testament. I stayed with my father for about eight years off and on, after my mother and sister passed away. During this time my father threw himself into the affairs of the Orthodox synagogue, the Schara Tzedeck. Here my father caused all sorts of problems while doing some good things too.
He tried to get rid of non-Jewish people who were members of the Jewish Community Centre at 41st Avenue and Oak street. If he had succeeded, the community centre would have gone bankrupt. He demanded that all Jewish restaurants serve only kosher food. "You're father is impossible to work with," one woman told me. "He's crazy about kosher food."
I should have left my father's high rise long before I eventually did. Finally I moved into a tiny one bedroom place on the west side of Kitsilano. But I was a mess. "That man is still fighting his father," one woman, who I worked with at one time, said about me. She was right.
In fact I became the opposite of my dad. He was an Orthodox Jew. I became a liberal Christian. He was a married man. I never married. He ran after the rich and the well-to-do. I became at one time a hard core socialist and worked with the truly poor. He could never save any money. "Your father is a cash addict," another woman I knew told me. I became a real cheapskate who could save a money even at times when I lived on welfare.
There were other opposites in our lives. My father worked from the age of 13 to the day he retired at 78. I worked a total of about 11 years. Last, my father was a good athlete who played a good game of soccer and won many medals on the track in the 100 and 200 yard races. He was a star at what was called 'the county level' in the U.K., which was like our provincial level in Canada. I, on the other hand was hopeless in sports. I couldn't catch a baseball or throw a football.
Yet I could swim which I was still doing in my early 70's. My father never learned that skill. And there must have been other ways that I differed sharply from my father. I can't think of them now, but they surely existed. Yet up until the age of 35 or so, in my character I was very like my father. Like him, I was brash and abusive, and caused problems, whatever organization I joined.
Once I ended up in this tiny suite in Kitsilano I continued my disruptive path. Now at times massive rages overcame me and then sadness settled in my brain. I wanted to cry but couldn't. I kept on taking valium and abusing women. Then in late 1974, I contracted chomdromalacia, or a roughening of the kneecaps. My knees swelled up and I could only walk now with the help of crutches.
What would I do, I wondered. How would I survive? Then suddenly a rescuer came into view.
Yet before he showed up, I had detoured into weight training that made me need him even more.
Monday, 15 August 2016
Exits and Entrances A Journey Through Many Landscaped by Dave Jaffe; Chapter Four - Part Two
Chapter Four - Part Two
In the summer of 1967, my sister Valerie was already dead. My mother was dying. In between those two traumatic events one of my favourite musicians, John Coltrane died at the age of 40. This wonderfully talented African American played the saxophone in ways that entranced me. Now he too passed away. I didn't grieve all these deaths enough. I should have. Instaed I enrolled at the University of British Columbia to be a teacher, a job I knew I wouldn't like.
Already in Montreal I'd dropped out of Macdonald Teacher's College two years in a row. Still, I trudged on trying to be a teacher since there seemed to be no other choice. One final death remained. My cousin, one of my father's brother Ted, died at the age of 21. It happened while my father was visiting England in December. I had never felt alone as in that month.
I started to shake and I headed off to a doctor for a cure. He gave me valium and for a while I became a valium addict, a devotee of this tiny yellow pill.
"What a drag it is getting old," sang Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones in the Stones' song 'Mother's Little Helper'. "If you're not really ill/ There's this little, yellow pill". To compound my problems in those days of sadness, troubled people swirled around me or came visiting. Stan from Montreal rented a room near the Haro Street apartment where I was living with my father. He enrolled in the Faculty of Education like I did. Yet then he dropped out of his courses and slept in every day.
Alan a very nervous young man, showed up in Vancouver. He too came from Montreal. Alan got arrested in student sit-in at Simon Fraser University up on Burnaby Mountain. "I want to go back to the metropolis, and find a job," Alan said." I don't want to be stuck out here in the hinterland." Alan's mood didn't improve as his trial strung out for months on end.
Then there was Mike, a talented musician who had nervous problems. "That man is a genius on the guitar, but a child at life," a woman who knew Mike said. Mike's mood swings added to my torment. His partner Lori whom I called "Chappie" saved him from self-destruction.
Finally, Ted Newman, a former classmate of mine in Northmount High showed up to see me. He brought his wife Robyn and his baby daughter Galen along. Ted had had his problems in the past. But now he seemed very steady, and compared to me and my other friends, he was the sanest of us all.
And then there was my dad.
In the summer of 1967, my sister Valerie was already dead. My mother was dying. In between those two traumatic events one of my favourite musicians, John Coltrane died at the age of 40. This wonderfully talented African American played the saxophone in ways that entranced me. Now he too passed away. I didn't grieve all these deaths enough. I should have. Instaed I enrolled at the University of British Columbia to be a teacher, a job I knew I wouldn't like.
Already in Montreal I'd dropped out of Macdonald Teacher's College two years in a row. Still, I trudged on trying to be a teacher since there seemed to be no other choice. One final death remained. My cousin, one of my father's brother Ted, died at the age of 21. It happened while my father was visiting England in December. I had never felt alone as in that month.
I started to shake and I headed off to a doctor for a cure. He gave me valium and for a while I became a valium addict, a devotee of this tiny yellow pill.
"What a drag it is getting old," sang Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones in the Stones' song 'Mother's Little Helper'. "If you're not really ill/ There's this little, yellow pill". To compound my problems in those days of sadness, troubled people swirled around me or came visiting. Stan from Montreal rented a room near the Haro Street apartment where I was living with my father. He enrolled in the Faculty of Education like I did. Yet then he dropped out of his courses and slept in every day.
Alan a very nervous young man, showed up in Vancouver. He too came from Montreal. Alan got arrested in student sit-in at Simon Fraser University up on Burnaby Mountain. "I want to go back to the metropolis, and find a job," Alan said." I don't want to be stuck out here in the hinterland." Alan's mood didn't improve as his trial strung out for months on end.
Then there was Mike, a talented musician who had nervous problems. "That man is a genius on the guitar, but a child at life," a woman who knew Mike said. Mike's mood swings added to my torment. His partner Lori whom I called "Chappie" saved him from self-destruction.
Finally, Ted Newman, a former classmate of mine in Northmount High showed up to see me. He brought his wife Robyn and his baby daughter Galen along. Ted had had his problems in the past. But now he seemed very steady, and compared to me and my other friends, he was the sanest of us all.
And then there was my dad.
Saturday, 13 August 2016
Exits and Entrances: A Journey Through Many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Four
Chapter Four: Part One.
The media dubbed the summer of 1967, "the Summer of Love." I called it' "The Summer of Death." While hippies grew their hair long, smoked dope and poured into places like Haight Ashberry in San Francisco, and Kitsilano in Vancouver, I wrestled with grief.
I last saw my sister Valerie in the spring of 1967. She lay dead in a room in a Vancouver hospital. She was only 21 but she was killed by a massive cerebral hemorrhage. I placed my fingers on her cold dead lips and muttered to myself, "Poor Valerie." In her so short life, my younger didn't find much joy. She was too young to remember the good times in Willesden. She hated living in my shadow as she made her way through the halls of Iona Avenue School and then Northmount High.
"I'm always known as your sister," she told me once. "Always people say, 'Oh, you're Jaffe's sister'. I hate it. And then there's all those snobs at school." In high school, with the exception of Grade 10, I always scored reasonably high marks. Valerie consistently got C's and C+'s, but no higher.
Yet she had a very fine voice and should have gone to a musical academy. But my parents had no money to make that happen.
Once out of high school in 1962 which was two years after I graduated, Valerie trecked to work in offices to file, type and answer phones. Her blonde brownish hair always looked nice. Yet sadness often glazed her blue eyes. The men she went out with, often abused her. I did too and we often fought. After a disastrous stay in London, England, Valerie came back to Montreal. Here, she met a short ambitious Englishman named Dave Trowbridge. "Get on the birth control pill," this native of Hoxton, England insisted. Valerie did for she was scared of getting pregnant.
Taking those estrogen-packed pills I believe killed Valerie with a stroke. Dave left shortly after her death, and went back to London England.
Still grieving my dead sister, I ended up in the Vancouver General Hospital in August 1967. I watched one afternoon as my unconscious mother lay in a white sheeted bed. She had now shrunk down to 35 kilograms. Bruises and red marks ran across her skeletal body. For the past two years my mother had struggled with breast cancer. Now on a sunny afternoon in late August, she died.
In the past two years from 1965 to 1967, my mother saw her mother die, and one of her daughters. She had struggled for the past 15 years to hold our family together through pain and poverty. My mother had never gone through the poverty that she did with my father, for she came from an upper middle class family.
And then came more deaths that I'll deal with shortly. This for me was a tough time.
The media dubbed the summer of 1967, "the Summer of Love." I called it' "The Summer of Death." While hippies grew their hair long, smoked dope and poured into places like Haight Ashberry in San Francisco, and Kitsilano in Vancouver, I wrestled with grief.
I last saw my sister Valerie in the spring of 1967. She lay dead in a room in a Vancouver hospital. She was only 21 but she was killed by a massive cerebral hemorrhage. I placed my fingers on her cold dead lips and muttered to myself, "Poor Valerie." In her so short life, my younger didn't find much joy. She was too young to remember the good times in Willesden. She hated living in my shadow as she made her way through the halls of Iona Avenue School and then Northmount High.
"I'm always known as your sister," she told me once. "Always people say, 'Oh, you're Jaffe's sister'. I hate it. And then there's all those snobs at school." In high school, with the exception of Grade 10, I always scored reasonably high marks. Valerie consistently got C's and C+'s, but no higher.
Yet she had a very fine voice and should have gone to a musical academy. But my parents had no money to make that happen.
Once out of high school in 1962 which was two years after I graduated, Valerie trecked to work in offices to file, type and answer phones. Her blonde brownish hair always looked nice. Yet sadness often glazed her blue eyes. The men she went out with, often abused her. I did too and we often fought. After a disastrous stay in London, England, Valerie came back to Montreal. Here, she met a short ambitious Englishman named Dave Trowbridge. "Get on the birth control pill," this native of Hoxton, England insisted. Valerie did for she was scared of getting pregnant.
Taking those estrogen-packed pills I believe killed Valerie with a stroke. Dave left shortly after her death, and went back to London England.
Still grieving my dead sister, I ended up in the Vancouver General Hospital in August 1967. I watched one afternoon as my unconscious mother lay in a white sheeted bed. She had now shrunk down to 35 kilograms. Bruises and red marks ran across her skeletal body. For the past two years my mother had struggled with breast cancer. Now on a sunny afternoon in late August, she died.
In the past two years from 1965 to 1967, my mother saw her mother die, and one of her daughters. She had struggled for the past 15 years to hold our family together through pain and poverty. My mother had never gone through the poverty that she did with my father, for she came from an upper middle class family.
And then came more deaths that I'll deal with shortly. This for me was a tough time.
Friday, 12 August 2016
Exits and Entrances: A Journey Through Many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Three - Part four
Exits and Entrances - Chapter Three, Part Four.
In late 1966, my mother and father head off to Vancouver. Valerie, my younger sister who's just come back from a disastrous stay in London, England joins me on a train ride out to this west coast city. So in 1966 I cross Canada three times by land.
Once in Vancouver I head off to San Francisco by bus. I go back there the next winter for seven days or so. I then take a long journey by bus to the U.S. and Mexico in the winter of 1970 to 1971. Once back in Vancouver, I stay with my father but get restless again. I soon head off to Europe to meet my dad's family after 18 years away from them. I don't get on with most of them save for Jon Breslaw, a Reaganesque son of my father's cousin Dot. Jon and I have already met in Berkeley where he's taking his Ph.D.
Two years after this in 1973 I bus across Canada once more to Montreal. "You sure must have been restless," a therapist tells me a few years later. I definitely was.
But the 1973 jaunt across Canada turns into a disaster. I get thrown out of one place I stay in, and have to leave another person's place after an argument with him. Then I crash at another person's place which makes this young man with a wife and a child feel very crowded. Montreal to my surprise, doesn't turn me on anymore. It now looks old and not beautiful like Vancouver.
I was now 31 years old. Most of my age group had grown up, toiled away in careers, got married, bought houses' had children and settled down. Here was I, an ageing hippie, still moving from place to place with little money and a dropout from a teaching career that went nowhere. "There's teachers and learners," the main character in John Updike's novel 'The Centaur' says in effect. "I was meant to be a learner." I still didn't have a clue of what I was meant to be.
Tragedies too piled up along the way. I had to make choices in my life. Soon life made those choices for me.
In late 1966, my mother and father head off to Vancouver. Valerie, my younger sister who's just come back from a disastrous stay in London, England joins me on a train ride out to this west coast city. So in 1966 I cross Canada three times by land.
Once in Vancouver I head off to San Francisco by bus. I go back there the next winter for seven days or so. I then take a long journey by bus to the U.S. and Mexico in the winter of 1970 to 1971. Once back in Vancouver, I stay with my father but get restless again. I soon head off to Europe to meet my dad's family after 18 years away from them. I don't get on with most of them save for Jon Breslaw, a Reaganesque son of my father's cousin Dot. Jon and I have already met in Berkeley where he's taking his Ph.D.
Two years after this in 1973 I bus across Canada once more to Montreal. "You sure must have been restless," a therapist tells me a few years later. I definitely was.
But the 1973 jaunt across Canada turns into a disaster. I get thrown out of one place I stay in, and have to leave another person's place after an argument with him. Then I crash at another person's place which makes this young man with a wife and a child feel very crowded. Montreal to my surprise, doesn't turn me on anymore. It now looks old and not beautiful like Vancouver.
I was now 31 years old. Most of my age group had grown up, toiled away in careers, got married, bought houses' had children and settled down. Here was I, an ageing hippie, still moving from place to place with little money and a dropout from a teaching career that went nowhere. "There's teachers and learners," the main character in John Updike's novel 'The Centaur' says in effect. "I was meant to be a learner." I still didn't have a clue of what I was meant to be.
Tragedies too piled up along the way. I had to make choices in my life. Soon life made those choices for me.
Thursday, 11 August 2016
Exits and Entrances - A Journey Through Many Landscapes - by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Three - Part Two.
Exits and Entrances - Chapter Three - PartTwo
I'm glad I took my first trip across the U.S. and parts of Canada. Yet after my return to Montreal I feel unhappy. In a few years I would leave Montreal. But I decided to head out once more.
In the basement of the Eaton's department store not far from McGill University, I meet a woman from Los Angeles. I fall in love with her though she tells me right away, "I'm engaged to be married." Ignoring these warning signals, I hitchhike and ride buses to Los Angeles the next summer. The woman I like so much tells me to get lost. Yet I live at my sister's apartment and spend long wonderful hours on the beaches at Santa Monica. I realized years later that this was the first time in 15 years that I'd been to a beach.
Once again, back in Montreal I vow to leave this city. I'd seen the west coast of North America and the climate and natural beauty there had turned me off Montreal forever. Yet I don't want to live in the U.S. of A. Its right-wing politics frighten me.
Yet everything seems seems to be tilting west. Aldous Huxley lives and dies in Los Angeles. He dies on the same day that President JFK is shot dead. Henry Miller, another one of my favourite writers, stays in Big Sur in California. Ken Kesey, a rising young novelist, farms in Oregon. And Montreal's winters and summers still suck. Plus I'm now increasingly aware of the rise of separatist feelings in the province of Quebec. But where can I go to?
Then an answer comes in the person of Dick Clemens now calling himself 'p.x. belinski'. He introduces me to the writings of C. Wright Mills, a left-leaning American sociologist. He gives me back issues of the Marxist monthly 'Monthly Review'. This long-haired 20 something hippie type has been to Cuba, joined 'ban-the bomb' movements and has had at least one nervous breakdown. Still, I find him to be one of the most interesting people I've met. Clemens moves to Vancouver in 1965 and I plan to follow him.
I'm not saying "I'm apolitical" anymore. I've become a Marxist. Soon I head off to Vancouver. For the first time I hitchhike and bus across this vast land of Canada, astounded at its empty spaces and clean neat western cities like Regina, Calgary and Vancouver.
Then in September 1966 I come back to Montreal. "I'm leaving here," my dad tells me when I come to my parents' tiny one bedroom apartment in McGill's student's ghetto. "We're going to Vancouver." My father has found a job with a cablevision company that has its head office in Vancouver. And wonder of wonders he's no longer poor. He and my mother aren't rich either . Yet their and mine 15 year trek through poverty and destitution is over. Life is bearable again.
Me and my family are on the move again but this time with more money in our pockets. So goodbye Montreal. Hello Vancouver. This was a good move.
I'm glad I took my first trip across the U.S. and parts of Canada. Yet after my return to Montreal I feel unhappy. In a few years I would leave Montreal. But I decided to head out once more.
In the basement of the Eaton's department store not far from McGill University, I meet a woman from Los Angeles. I fall in love with her though she tells me right away, "I'm engaged to be married." Ignoring these warning signals, I hitchhike and ride buses to Los Angeles the next summer. The woman I like so much tells me to get lost. Yet I live at my sister's apartment and spend long wonderful hours on the beaches at Santa Monica. I realized years later that this was the first time in 15 years that I'd been to a beach.
Once again, back in Montreal I vow to leave this city. I'd seen the west coast of North America and the climate and natural beauty there had turned me off Montreal forever. Yet I don't want to live in the U.S. of A. Its right-wing politics frighten me.
Yet everything seems seems to be tilting west. Aldous Huxley lives and dies in Los Angeles. He dies on the same day that President JFK is shot dead. Henry Miller, another one of my favourite writers, stays in Big Sur in California. Ken Kesey, a rising young novelist, farms in Oregon. And Montreal's winters and summers still suck. Plus I'm now increasingly aware of the rise of separatist feelings in the province of Quebec. But where can I go to?
Then an answer comes in the person of Dick Clemens now calling himself 'p.x. belinski'. He introduces me to the writings of C. Wright Mills, a left-leaning American sociologist. He gives me back issues of the Marxist monthly 'Monthly Review'. This long-haired 20 something hippie type has been to Cuba, joined 'ban-the bomb' movements and has had at least one nervous breakdown. Still, I find him to be one of the most interesting people I've met. Clemens moves to Vancouver in 1965 and I plan to follow him.
I'm not saying "I'm apolitical" anymore. I've become a Marxist. Soon I head off to Vancouver. For the first time I hitchhike and bus across this vast land of Canada, astounded at its empty spaces and clean neat western cities like Regina, Calgary and Vancouver.
Then in September 1966 I come back to Montreal. "I'm leaving here," my dad tells me when I come to my parents' tiny one bedroom apartment in McGill's student's ghetto. "We're going to Vancouver." My father has found a job with a cablevision company that has its head office in Vancouver. And wonder of wonders he's no longer poor. He and my mother aren't rich either . Yet their and mine 15 year trek through poverty and destitution is over. Life is bearable again.
Me and my family are on the move again but this time with more money in our pockets. So goodbye Montreal. Hello Vancouver. This was a good move.
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