[Mission accomplished – just not the one you wanted.  -Ed.]

With all of that in mind, I feel it behooves me to provide my gracious, long-suffering readers with a few helpful hints and tidbits that may help them endure the frozen, sodden, windswept temporal territory between now and the arrival of spring. So, here goes:

1. Take the advice of Goethe: Never hurry, never rest. Well, I say “never rest,” but really you should probably rest quite frequently. And eat those pink frosted donuts, the kind with sprinkles. You can do that while you’re resting.
2. Make lots of mistakes. I mean, really fuck things up. You know you’re going to anyway, because, well, human and all. But if you make it sort of a rule, then you can have the satisfaction of placing a check mark beside it. It may be helpful to invest in a clipboard.
3. Listen to more music, and expand your horizons. Listen to everything from Scandinavian death metal to Chopin etudes. Nothing cauterizes the ragged, wounded soul quite so well as the soft torch of music.
4. Take up four new interests, and stick with them. You can easily find the time by cutting back on social media and Netflix. You spend way too much time in front of a screen. You know it’s true.
5. Always be kind, and be generous with your time and energy on behalf of others. But pay attention to the kick ass wisdom of flight attendants and adjust your own oxygen mask before seeking to assist others. I think you know what I mean.
6. Devote yourself to one massively ambitious project this year. Something you’re passionate about, but that will really stretch your mind, body, and soul. Write a string quartet or a romance novel. Train for a marathon. Knit yourself a space shuttle.
7. Find lots of really good hiding places. Abandoned aquariums or treehouses can be good. Bring lots of candles, books, jujubes, pickled herring, and stilton cheese.
8. Read more, and eat more vegetables. Maybe trim back a little bit on an unhealthy habit or two. (But don’t go overboard with that, okay? It makes the rest of us look pretty bad.)
9. Force yourself to do two things every day that you would rather not do. For me, it’s getting out of bed in the morning and going to bed at night. (Don’t forget the check marks. Man, this is gold!)
10. Finally, do yourself a favour and ignore all of this gibberish, and substitute your own, more helpful strategies. Do whatever feels right for you and gets you through to spring. Should any of the foregoing be helpful to you, though, please, be my guest.

[Darjeeling Jones wrote for The Voice Magazine for some time before deciding to move to greener pastures after the first half of 2020.  I could always count on the Porkpie Hat to be thought provoking, almost decadent.  So I was very happy to receive the go-ahead to republish this piece, with the original editor’s note included, from way back in our January 24^th issue, as part of the Best of 2020.]

That said, I do have an enormous aversion to the ordinary and the tepid.  I absolutely refuse to compliantly submit myself to the quotidian.  And yet, sometimes it can sneak up on you.  Especially in this time of mass communication, it’s so easy to be hypnotized by mundanity, isn’t it?  Here’s a prime example for me: the endless deluge of electronic entertainment at our fingertips.  All my life, which has been a fairly long one to date (I’ll be turning 60 next year), I’ve managed to avoid watching very much television at all.  In fairness, this was fairly easy, because for most of my life nearly everything on TV  was absolute crap.  Sure, there was the occasional gem, like Columbo, Taxi, Hill Street Blues, etc.  but finding something good to watch on the idiot box was akin to plucking the occasional ruby out of a raw sewage pipe.  Over the course of the last ten or fifteen years, though, that seems to have all changed.  Now, there is a bewildering selection of pretty high-quality entertainment available on an increasing number of streaming services.

Perhaps this is a good thing, but it doesn’t feel like it to me.  Here’s the problem: it’s still just sitting in front of a screen.  It’s enervating, depressing, and addicting.  Binge watching, even when it’s good stuff, leaves me feeling lessened, rather than enriched.  Is it the same for you?  I want to feel that my life is a rich adventure, even if just in very small and modest ways.  I love films, but going to a movie theatre is not the same thing as watching one at home, in the same way that carefully selecting a record album and attentively listening to it all the way through is not equivalent to clicking a “soft indie rock” music stream on Spotify.  Listening to music with intentionality feels like an adventure to me.  So does reading a book, baking bread, beachcombing, writing a poem, planting flowers, roller skating, building a bookcase, attending a symphony, sharing a pot of tea, and kayaking on a lake under a blanket of stars.  In my experience, all of these things, and ten thousand more ordinary / exotic pursuits have the benefit of leaving me feeling filled up, energized, and alive, in a way that scrolling through “Just Added” lists and social media feeds never has, and never could.

So, I have made a commitment to myself: no more than an hour of screen time per day, other than work.  I’ve only been at it for eight days now, but I’ve managed to stick with it so far.  It’s truly felt like a sort of renewal for me.  I feel like I’m taking more control of my life, spending more time doing the things that bring me real pleasure, rather than numbness and distraction.  If anybody else is up for the challenge, I would so love to hear from you about it.  All the best, my friends.

“Oh well, the devil makes us sin

-Massive Attack, ‘Paradise Circus’

“God made food; the devil the cooks.”

-James Joyce, Ulysses

The chefs’ movements are fluid as any dancer’s, their hands skilled as any surgeon’s.

(Saltimbocca, cassoulet, roasted vegetables, veal with hollandaise sauce.)

The restaurant has no name, and is in a different location each night, but It is the most sought-after reservation in the city. Only the wealthiest and most notorious inhabitants of the metropolis ever make it past the door.

(Lobster with white truffles, reindeer marrow, swan livers in cream and brandy.)

To be a well-heeled murderer or a financially independent arsonist is not nearly enough; at best, it might get you a stifled yawn from maître d’, as he points one white-gloved finger at the entrance and the street beyond, directing you back from whence you came, across the threshold where the former middle-class are huddled against the cold. The rare bohemian, if they’re lucky and crafty enough, may sneak by, until they’re discovered and disposed of.

(Filet de tigre, elephant lung consomme, a gingered lark’s tongue, roasted within a woodland hare, stuffed inside a wild boar with a golden apple in its mouth.)

The competition is becoming more stringent by the year. Black market ivory dealers, human organ smugglers, rare game poachers, opioid tycoons, biological weapons merchants, political torturers: every evening, all the hungriest ghosts are there, like slavering beasts gathered at a watering hole, crushed together, cheek-by-jowl. Old money lunatics, new money gangsters, Pall Mall madams, underworld solicitors, Russian oligarchs, Eurotrash semi-celebrities, upper echelon drug magnates, disgraced politicians, venture capital money launderers, double-agent diplomats, and the occasional flavour-of-the-month writer or artist hoping to give themselves a bit of cachet-by-association through hanging around with a notoriously dodgy crowd.

The blue velvet curtains are drawn tight, so that it might just as easily be approaching midnight as 3 PM, just as easily be late December as early May. The bartenders are shaking dirty martinis into existence, whilst the cigarette girls and the flower girls are making their rounds, peddling Gitanes, Davidoffs, unearthly orchids, and obscenely voluptuous long stemmed roses. On the small dais stage, Misty Beaucoup, the latest sensation, is performing her highly interpretive version of “Tainted Love,” accompanied by an orchestra of animatronic mannequins, wearing Plague Doctor masks.

(And for dessert: a figurine of the Virgin Mary, as fine as any statue in the Uffizi, perfectly crafted from spun sugar, with a cherry dipped in baby’s blood concealed in the centre, to symbolize a heart.)

Despite its minimalist furnishings of glinting chrome and steel, the restaurant is as old as humanity itself. Such a timeless carnival of wonders and horrors this terrifying palace, this elegant abattoir has beheld! The proprietor stands on the mezzanine, his pale, long-fingered hands gripping the ivory railing, and gazes indulgently down upon the rich and jostling throng. Nobody has ever seen him, he likes his anonymity above all else. In the room below, the guests all order special coffees. It is their unspoken hope: if the dinner party goes on long enough, their thinking goes, then perhaps the bill need never be paid.

For example, I think we could do with a new form of currency with which to measure our wealth.  Walks in the park, pomegranates, feathers, and memories might be as good denominations as any.  Or, comings and goings through magnificent doorways, seawater cupped in the palms of our hands, unexpected laughter.  If it must be paper, let it be origami swans floating away down a river, or poems written upon vallum.  If it has to be gold, let it be the sunlight that lazy dogs fall asleep in.  If silver, let it be shafts of moonlight slanting through stained glass windows.  Let’s spend it all now, in one drunken binge.  If we play our cards right, there’s always more where that stuff came from.

While we are at it, how about a new way of reckoning the meaning of individual success.  Instead of evaluating it upon, in comparison to our peers, the number of real estate properties we own, the level of prestige our careers command, the degrees and possessions we’ve attained, or the checklist of braggable experiences we’ve managed to cross off our bucket lists, what if we gauged it by the degree to which our personal reservoirs of hope, curiosity, wonder, and love have stubbornly renewed themselves, refusing to be permanently depleted despite all the travails and vicissitudes that have inevitable been visited upon us?

As an added step, perhaps we could use this wild, anxiety-inducing epoch as an invitation to reconsider our priorities in countless other ways, including our responsibilities to ourselves, to others around us, to society, and to the planet itself.  We’ve traveled quite a long road with our current consciousness, values, and approaches to life.  I think many of us would agree that it’s been a bit of a mixed bag, results-wise.  We’ve had some shining moments, for sure.  The Renaissance, for instance.  We’ve produced some real treasures along the way, including hollandaise sauce, romantic poetry, space travel, and soul music, just to name a few.

Still, with global society lurching towards deepening levels of intolerance and upheaval, and our poor natural world teetering on the brink of complete exhaustion and collapse, there’s no time like the present to begin to explore new ways.  If we begin in time, there may be countless more adventures and rebirths awaiting our odd, inventive, often short-sighted species.  On the other hand, if we keep just killing time, we may find out that time is immortal, but we are not.  A perfect point in history, then, to reflect upon our past, and expand our vision of what the future could be.  As my great grandfather used to say, “never let a perfectly good gotterdammerung go to waste.” He was a hundred years old at the time, and completely crazy, but I think he made some sense.  To paraphrase one of our own informal poet laureates, Gord Downie, bring on a brand new renaissance.  I think I’m ready.

Like many of us, I believe, I have been thinking about the nature of time quite a bit during this year of isolation and plague.  Time, for once, is a resource that seems in ample abundance and, like any other precious and non-renewable resource, I am hoping to start making worthier, more conscious use of it.  But, again like many of us, I have been frittering it away, squandering it recklessly and mindlessly.  Napping and bingeing, dreaming and drooling; all the usual things.  This doesn’t make me feel too anxious, because I’ve always believed that skylarking and wasting time are essential aspects of my personality, and I’ve never felt much burdened by any sense of protestant work ethic.

Still, I feel as though this current thickening and gelling of time, glowing like a vein of gold inside the dark mineshaft of the pandemic, is a real opportunity, a chance to deepen and enrich the way I think about the passing of days.  Attempting to thoughtlessly kill time can be a tricky and dangerous business.  Sometimes you simply can’t kill it.  It won’t die.  Like a vampire, it rises from the coffin, looking to do you harm.  Like a ghost, it is patient, and can hang about for quite awhile.  So, rather than try to kill it, I think I want to embrace it a little more open-heartedly.

One of the ways I am trying to do this is by designating two days per week as “technology-free zones”.  As with most things in life, I can’t get by without a little bit of cheating, so I do allow myself the use of my turntable and kitchen utensils.  Still, no Netflix, no Tik Tok, no Google Play, Twitter, or Crave.  Although I am separated from my loved ones for a while, I have been keeping pretty good company during these times.  This Saturday, for instance, I spent the day with James Joyce, Puccini, Miles Davis, Kate Bush, and Johnnie Walker.  I lined the edge of the bathtub with whatever half-melted candles I could find, and read Joyce’s strange, wonderful, poetic Ulysses until the water grew cold.  Then, I listened to opera and jazz as I prepared moussaka.  After dinner, I went for a long walk along the banks of the river, marveling at the austere, haunting beauty of the dark flowing water and the mostly-still-bare branches of the April trees.  I woke up this morning, feeling renewed, and ready to face whatever sorts of time the next few days bring my way.

Last week, I was speaking with a friend of mine, a professional artist, who has been staying and working for the past few months in Portugal.  She was telling me that, as news of the COVID-19 pandemic was gaining momentum, she and her partner had been traveling to a couple of larger metropolitan areas in Spain and the South of France, before returning to the small coastal town that had been serving as their “home base”.  Even though this was more-or-less at the start of the virus, and well before any travel restrictions had been mandated, she had been feeling very guilty, worrying about whether they had unknowingly brought the illness back to this beautiful village, with its breath-taking coastal views, its warm, welcoming (and preponderantly elderly) inhabitants, and dire lack of the proper medical facilities and resources to adequately deal with this unforeseen medical catastrophe.  What if they, these “privileged tourists,” had driven back to the charming village with death as their invisible hitchhiker?

I did my best, of course, to reassure her, to tell her that she could not possibly have known at that point, and that it was in no way her fault.  Nevertheless, I could completely empathize with how she felt.  I’m sure it’s a feeling most of us have had at some point in our lives, whether justified or not: that we have, without meaning to, done some terrible harm to others.  Perhaps we have broken someone’s heart, or harmed them in some way, emotionally or physically, through recklessness, thoughtlessness, or negligence.  I know it’s a feeling that has kept me awake through many nights over the course of my life; things that I’ve done, or left undone; said, or left unsaid; so many things that I would like to change or undo.

Perhaps that is why so many of us are drawn to stories of imaginary sociopaths in novels, films, and television shows: Professor Moriarty, Hannibal Lecter, Alice Morgan, Villanelle.  In a strange sort of way, we often find ourselves more attracted to them than to the heroes of the stories.  It is pure escapism; we root for them because, on some level, we wish we were them.  We wish we could go through life doing whatever we want, living only for our own pleasure and gratification, without fear of a guilty conscience.

But what pale, twisted creatures we would be.  And what a terrible world this would be.  Conscience is a funny thing.  Like invisible ground glass, it tears us up inside.  Yet, without it, we would be so much less than human.  Indeed, it’s one of the ways we know that we are human.  Like love, sorrow, wonder, and joy, guilt and worry—the offspring of conscience—are essential aspects of our collective humanity; without them, we are diminished, something much less than fully developed beings.

It seems to me that life, when filtered through the human psyche, is a wondrously strange and complex experience.  All our emotions, whether ecstatically pleasurable or excruciatingly painful, form a vibrant, essential part of the intricate tapestry, the endlessly varying fugue.  To feel a profound sense of anxiety, such as that felt by my friend, is one of the costs—but also, perhaps, one of the privileges—of being alive.

I have always been drawn to the idea of predicting the future.  I went to a psychic once, many years ago, in Vancouver.  Oddly, or maybe appropriately, she worked out of a tiny space in the back of an insurance agency.  She had tarot cards and a lot of pashmina scarves strewn about.  I don’t think she was very accurate with me but, to be fair, I used to be a really terrible believer.  I kept expecting her to predict imminent fire damage or sewer back up.  Fortunately, I’m a much more gullible person now, since my capacity for cynicism has been fried to a crisp by the overload of recent politics.

These days, I have been fantasizing about getting my fortune read again.  In my overheated imagination, it would go something like this:

The old soothsayer’s shop is located in the shadows of the fairgrounds, between the rollercoaster and the bumper cars.  I pull back the pungent fur pelt that is her entranceway, and step into an atmosphere of lamplight and the smoke of burning herbs.  We negotiate terms; she asks me what I want to know, then she shakes the teacup filled with tiny rabbit bones and rolls them out upon the scarred wooden table.  “Now, all is revealed to me! I can read the secrets of the universe as effortlessly as any obituary written upon a page, and I see exactly how the future shall unfold: it shall unfold unpredictably.  There will be moments where everything is lost, and other moments so splendid and rich that a single one of them will be worth ten times all that you have suffered.  There will be false hopes, ecstasy and betrayal.  There will be luaus and parades, revelations, reckonings, recessions, and plagues.  There shall be sour nights, bitter twists of fate, and sweet ripples in time.  Most of all, there will be the necessity to cross my palm with silver, if you wish to leave this tent alive.” Stepping out of the tent onto the well-lit midway, with the scents of powdered sugar and approaching rain, feels like a blessing in itself.

But perhaps, after all, this predicting the future business is not what I thought it would be.  Perhaps the most reasonable thing to do right now is to just get on with life to the best of one’s ability.  There are many of us who are getting emotional eyestrain from trying to peer too far ahead.

Perhaps we should just focus on lending a hand to others, and finding and giving comfort however we can.  Maybe, for now, we should go home, tend to our wounds, and rest up for the inevitable challenges to come.  We’ve seen bad times and good times before.  When it’s safe to do so, we can bring each other pots of rooibos tea and cups of cocoa.  We can share canned peaches and sardines on toast.  We can plant begonias in the window box and read ghost stories together by the light of the beeswax candles your grandmother once sent you.  I bet—almost before we know it—we will have built the future, one hour at a time.  And, just maybe, we will make it through this somehow.

Travel has always been the most exciting thing for me, the greatest of pleasures.  To get lost in a new city or take a bend in the road and come across a view of the ocean.  To wander the streets, eat in the restaurants, peruse the galleries, sit in the concert halls of distant lands: these seem like the wildest, most exhilarating of adventures.  I’m sure many others feel the same way.

Sadly, though, travel is not in the cards for most of us right now, not outwardly, anyway.  Inwardly, however, the doors are still open, the concierge is helping with the luggage, and the taxicab is waiting at the curb.  When it comes to efficient means of transportation, nothing quite beats the vessels of the imagination, almost instantaneously shifting across vast distances of time and space, the engines burning a heady, perfumed mixture of rocket fuel and high octane dreams.

Where shall we fly to over the next few weeks, as we’re hunkered down in our (hopefully) cosy isolation chambers? I hear it rains diamonds on Neptune and Saturn.  We could walk through the early morning fog that’s covering the moor, as we listen to the unnerving howling of a dog.  Alternatively, we could exchange microfilm with a sexy Russian double agent in the ornate settings of the Cold War Ballet Russe.  Or, if we choose, we could meet Cleopatra and the Black Swan on the Orient Express.

I do understand how difficult it is, this feeling of being cut off from the rest of humanity.  But perhaps there’s an opportunity for us all to experience something rare and exquisite during these still, blue hours of isolation.  Maybe it’s our chance to acquaint ourselves with the wrenching, haunting beauty of loneliness.  It can be a frightening thing, the way that it floods the chambers of the soul, and it can sometimes feel as alarming as water filling the lungs.  “Will I drown?” we wonder.  And then, when we calm ourselves down, we realize we can still breathe.  In fact, we can swim freely through the slow, honeyed silence, discovering the consolations of art, of music.  There are books on the shelf, black tea in the pot, a record on the turntable, the richness of stillness, the wonder of having time on your hands to dream, remember, create.  Human beings are explorers of the inner world, every bit as much as of the outer.

Here, from the control tower of my little column, I will endeavour, in my own humble way, to provide you with an itinerary of diversions, frivolities, and (who knows?) perhaps even the occasional thought-provoking observation of the Inner World’s ever-changing landscapes.  So, anytime you care take a flight on Porkpie Air (“We Skimp on Basic Maintenance So We Can Offer Better Frills!”) I would love to have you onboard.  Regrettably, the in-flight movies tend to be spaghetti westerns and retro Hammer horror films, and the flight attendants can get a bit snarky when they’re hungover.  Still, the prices are right, and there’s no limit to the baggage you can bring.  Also, the imaginary whiskey sours and Armagnac are always complimentary.  Does anyone happen to know how to read a map?

To get myself through, I’ve been dreaming up these little themed diversions each weekend (well, Wednesday to Sunday).  This week’s theme is “Lowbrow Pop Sugar,” during which I’m eating many pink frosted donuts and reading Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls.  Up next , on back-to-back weekends, are “Burning Down the Bauhaus,” (listening to old post punk vinyl and reading vintage design magazines), and “Altered Steaks of Awareness,” (filet mignons, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and a double booking at the flotation tank spa).

I have no problem wallowing in these little luxuries and pleasures all by myself, or with a very small number of like-minded sky larkers.  After all, for an introvert, social isolation is like a tiki party for the soul.

There’s a part of me, though, that wonders if I’m not being a tad too insouciant about this whole thing.  I mean, are shrugs and bad puns really the best response to what some people, against all common sense and available data, seem to see as the end of the world? Should I not be panicking?  Instead of writing this wretchedly irresponsible column, for instance, should I not be doing something more constructive, like volunteering my time at a hospital, or driving to Costco and snatching the last package of toilet paper out of some elderly lady’s hands? In truth, I have considered doing one of those things, but was stalled by general inertia, an expired membership card, and a low level of gas in the tank.

Am I too lazy, shallow, and apathetic? It’s a question you may well be asking yourself about me, and frankly it’s one that I simply can’t be bothered to answer.  For now, I’m just hunkered down in my living room, drinking prosecco, listening to Bach, studying paint chips and wallpaper swatches with a view to an upcoming reno,  and mind mapping Japanese retro horror, frangipani, butterfly prawns, cool jazz, good sativa, beeswax candles, and homemade bread.  Oh, the delights ahead! The times may bode ill, but I intend to frivolously multitask-away the anxiety.  Come what may, I will recklessly enjoy my time in isolation before the world comes back to its senses again.

Today, we begin with some leaked information related to the colours Pink, and Red.

1. Pink

Apparently, if you were born under the influence of pink, you enjoy frothy tropical cocktails and elaborate layer cakes.  Either in this or some other lifetime you have wagered large sums of money in Monte Carlo.  You have an extensive collection of rare sequins or rococo bone china, possibly both, and the concept of tulle is by no means unknown to you.  You have considered a strict diet of fortune cookies.  Some of you are approval whores, and prone to using random social media hashtags and experimental fashion statements to get attention.  You yearn for the days of extra-long cigarette holders, and perhaps for you those days have never ended.  (How are we doing so far?)

1. Red

Those born under the influence of red (you know who you are) are irresistibly drawn towards neon signs and gypsy violins.  You enjoy bloody sunsets, blood oranges, bloody steaks, bloody marys, and probably blood.  (Fun fact: Countess Yvette-Marie Varennes, heiress to the Li Quan mahjong fortune – and the quintessential Red – bribed a corrupt Paris mortuary assistant to procure a jar of Oscar Wilde’s blood, mixing a single drop of it in each glass of her beloved cognac).  You have an intense thirst for poetry, raw experience, and revenge.  You are, let’s face it, a naughty and saucy type, probably not to be trusted with an expense account.  Obviously, you have attended multiple seances, barbecues, and black masses.  Probably this week.

From what I have been able to discern, further research is targeting the colours green, blue, indigo, and chartreuse.

Of course, this column, due to its revelatory nature, will soon be going viral, generating no end of excitement and debate.  I certainly plan on personally profiting from being the first to bring it to your attention, and am pleased to announce  (subject to the fruition of certain recently-placed wagers) that the Cosmic Colour Wheel will soon be the subject of a major independent motion picture documentary (working title: ‘Something Something Colour Wheel’), to be co-produced by Cheap Marketing Ploy and Desperate for Attention Productions.

Following is a sample of several likely-to-be-forthcoming critical reviews:

“A real freaking eye-opener! The place where sex, fashion, glamour, artistic stuff, and horror all meet to mingle in a responsible way, and to perform awkward dance moves.” Anticipated review, New York Times

“I laughed! I cried! I felt slightly violated.” Anticipated review, Wall Street Journal

“I can’t believe we paid … for that column.  Frankly, it’s … gibberish”  Anticipated review, The Voice Magazine

Furthermore, following the inevitable success of this column and film, plans are already taking shape for a diverse (yet synergistic) line of spin-off products, including fashion accessories, children’s toys, swimwear, and over-the-counter medications.

Please, just remember that you heard it here first!

[Editor’s note: A truly sagacious bit of satire, neatly eviscerating both the modern trends of Facebook personality tests, and the media fascination with viral-qua-viral postings. I can’t believe we paid so little for that column.  Frankly, it’s about time someone pointed out how it’s all gibberish.]