Roofing, Salinger and Sappho

dispatch #30

Monday...Above me the roofers are banging away – tearing off the roofing that is there so tomorrow they can install the new metal roof. They tell me that will be quieter. Several daylilies have been smooshed by tiles flying off the roof but they are a hardy plant. I daren’t look at my poor hydrangea. I think it has been spared but not on purpose. The fella, being a builder himself, came home and quickly lay down drop cloths from the back door to the bathroom in case they need to come in to use the loo. We didn’t know they were coming today. I was out at yoga, picked up by my friend Sherri, the yoga teacher. My own car is blocked in but I guess they’ll move the truck and trailer if I ask which I will have to at three so I can go to a naturopath appointment. At any rate, I came home all chillaxed from yoga to find five men hammering away on the roof and my car blocked. Also I do have clients coming to the house later this week and so I needed to know what the heck. The heck is that they should be done by tomorrow afternoon. Good say I. Because there is no possible way I could talk to clients with that going on. And their radio, and coming in to take a piss. I could never live in an apartment. I couldn’t stand being squished between two completely alien sets of lives. I feel trapped as it is. They are right above where I’m working now. Scraping something along the roof and then hammering in what sounds like inches from where I sit. Think I’ll go have a late lunch and write down what I need to ask my naturopath. Yes.

Wednesday...the roofers are back. They were supposed to come yesterday to finish up but the metal roofing wasn’t in or the truck wasn’t or some glitch. They are aware I have a client this afternoon and will have to be done as though it is significantly quieter it is by no means an environment in which someone could bare their heart. They have music playing and it is acceptable. Light rock I think they call it. I sound like a real geezer but ‘light’ and ‘rock’ don’t go together in my ancient brain. The roofers seem like nice lads and I saw one of them put something to his mouth which I thought initially was a cigarette but turned out to be a stick of gum and then he carefully put the wrapper in his pocket which led my mind to remember when Nancy Greene Raine (the Canadian ski champion) was featured in some ad or something and was standing at the top of a mountain and threw a gum wrapper or candy bar wrapper on to the ground and a whole bunch of outrage happened. Just looked it up. It was 1970 and she was doing an ad for Mars Bars and threw a wrapper on the ground. Apparently that has dogged her life since. Imagine! She was a senator from 2009 until 2018 put in by Stephen Harper. So I guess she learned nothing. Only Canadians will get that. And not all of them.

Roofers have a bit of a reputation which I doubt is well-earned at this point. It arose I believe because no one who knew anything in the building world wanted to put roofs on. Roofers don’t build roofs as I understand – Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (J.D. Salinger) Salinger took the title from a fragment of Sappho’s fragment LP 111 “Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.” Roofers put the roof materials on the already in place roof beams and stringers and whatnot. I know, I know, but there are things I just don’t need to know. We’re getting a metal roof because then the fella doesn’t have to go on the roof in the eye of the hurricane to nail down lifting shingles like he did a few years back. He told me that I’d be glad of it because the roof wouldn’t leak and I told him that that would be scant reward for losing him. “Yes, Ron got blown off the roof but hey it doesn’t leak so there’s that.” So – to come back to the topic at hand – roofers used to be made of crews who were willing to do that work – hot, dangerous, not particularly well-paid and so on. Things have changed and this crew looks as good as any I’ve seen on any part of a building project.

Remembering the title of the Salinger book led me to look at other Sappho fragments of which there are few. Here’s one I particularly like:

16

SOME the army of cavalry, others of infantry

or of ships say upon this dark earth

that is the fairest. But I say fairest is that: whoever you love.

It's easy to make this clear to all.

For she who far surpassed all human beings in beauty, Helen

abandoned the finest man and to Troy sailed,

and neither her child nor her beloved parents thought her, not for a moment [ ].

This made me now think of Anaktoria, not being here anymore, Oh I wish I could see the enamoring step and the shiny glare of her face, rather than Lydians' chariots and infantry's battles and armor.

I love this. Not sure why – guess the line “But I say fairest is that: whoever you love.”

Yes, fair readers – I am prone to wandering with my prose this week. I don’t want to follow a strict structure but just go where my mind suggests – this path and that to see what arises. Last week I wrote on violence against women and wasn’t even aware that on the same day this came out in the news:

Following an extraordinary reversal by Premier Tim Houston, the Nova Scotia legislature on Thursday adopted a bill declaring domestic violence an epidemic in the province.

The lightning-fast passage of the bill introduced by the opposition NDP came less than an hour after the premier told reporters he didn't think the legislation was necessary. CBC

So my meandering mind needs to have these dispatches in which nothing particularly profound or weighty is discussed. Roofers and Salinger and Sappho. And the healing qualities of poetry. Which we are prone to forget. We can forget that we need to be redeemed by laughter and beauty and a well-crafted poem. That having a roof over head is tremendously precious, and also having a friend to laugh with, and a poem to treasure and a flower that escapes roof decapitation.

Hope your week was good. If you get anything out of these dispatches I would love a comment or a like or a passing on of it to someone you think might like it. I’m well aware that you cannot have a meal these days without giving a review and so I’m loath to ask but still I would like to see these words travel a little further (farther) than they have.