I’ll tell you a small detail about my madness. I’m obsessed with magical signs. I see them everywhere, and it is what I love most about my life. Without ethereal, impossible, beautiful synchronicity,  life would be meaningless and cruel. It doesn’t matter to me if that’s ‘real’ or not. It is what I do to keep my psyche alive. And so, you see, I have ‘fun with fate’ games, small, pleasant, harmless rites that guide me along my discovery walks. These games of mine make connection out of random, disparate things.

So this is all how it came about that I’m rereading the amazing Lynn Crosbie’s Queen Rat. I noted that this is New Year’s Day for Year of the Rat. The Asian astrology system says we each have traits or lessons to be found in our year of birth’s animal, and by chance this year’s animal is the same as the year I was born.

My interest in astrology is fleeting and my knowledge limited, but like many curious, I check my magic signs and numbers to see what they have to say about me. I picked up Queen Rat to honour in some small, random way the New Year for my sign. There was no connection in this tiny ritual except the word “rat” but the way I roll is this: “in the beginning was the word.” I believe in incredible things.

It’s no small feat to write a book that Al Purdy calls the best that year. I will tell Lynn now that this was one of the books we yapped about over endless coffees or a hidden mickey of Silent Sam. It was the kind of text that made me jealous, but in a good way, the way this woman never ran out of the right words. And the book was filled with those favourite morsels I love- signs, details, ghosts of people I’ve lost and found, wandering the places we’ve been.

I recall an era where I sipped endless tea refills at the Golden Griddle in the middle of the night, sitting with the tired waitress and the tired drag queens. The days where we bent over a congealed cold plate of potato puffs and talked about the end of the world. Those were also the days we crawled Kensington Market, the days we walked miles from Queen and Niagara out past what is now trendy Leslieville. It’s the era where we would peer in dusty antiquarian bookshops and not have any idea in the world where we were heading. Those were the days of drumming circles and wimmin’s events and the peace camp and the fetish clubs and the LSD. The bygone days of dressing like Girl George and smoking like a chimney at vampire clubs.

It’s amazing to sift through a poem like James Joyce Pub: “we find an abandoned grocery cart and push Michael fast and let go.” Once in a laundromat in Kensington, Japey thought it would be funny and alarming to other patrons if he went into the dryer with half a dozen oranges. Just for a few turns. I don’t know why I’m thinking of this now, but now that he’s gone, I treasure every random memory of Japey. And following that poem that gave me that small, fragmented gift of recollection, is one called Kensington Market.  In these poems, we are witnesses. Here, we witness this: “I stare him down; we gather her things, barrettes and beads, a little purse/chenille bedspread, /and look at her: the girl’s face is diamonded with bruises….” Then, “like cat’s teeth, tearing rotting flesh, to subsist; she turns to him/….opiates she knows are tender, hard, familiar with this alchemy…”

And so it is that I begin this new year astonished and inspired. The words flow so beautifully together that it’s torture, nearly. Listen to this one:

“Priscilla arched her back and hissed when I brought
him home, her black fur rising like garter snakes.
Two little ones are double trouble,
but when I saw them kids take a knife to him,
my hands flew into the air like I was catching a moonstone.
He trembled against me, and I told him, All your trials soon be over.
Singing it some: his tail beating like a little white scarf,
caught in some king’s fingers.”

Poem after poem transports me. Remember this? Amaryllis, which starts by taking your heart right out: “You can’t miss me, he said, And I waited for him at the long wooden table.” “The beauty that does not die at the centre of his terrible stories.” “The day he left, we looked at one-eyed fish in the leaden stream. The/air was sleepy, as sultry/as the silk-red amaryllis.”

Words really are magical, words in poems, words in songs, words like let there be light. From Allan Gardens, 1994: “He disliked Daniel’s fiction and I disagreed. He told me a photograph of/the two of them together had fallen from a book the week before he died, which troubled him.” Signs and portents are everywhere, see? Then, “The spring that silvers your bones” and “there is a frail banana tree” are two other nuggets among a hundred in this piece.

It’s no coincidence to me that the word “story” is scrambled inside the word “astrology.”  The world is a puzzle- and the word “word” inside of “world” is a piece of that puzzle to madwomen like me. 

Listen:

“Though the Western rat is reviled as little more than a bottom-dwelling disease  carrier, this animal is viewed much differently in the East. The Eastern rat is revered for its quick wits and its ability to accrue and hold on to items of value;  rats are considered a symbol of good luck and wealth in both China and Japan. Clever  and quick-witted, the Rat of the Chinese Zodiac is utterly disarming to boot. Possessed  of excellent taste, this Sign flaunts its style at every turn. Its natural charm  and sharp, funny demeanor make it an appealing friend for almost anyone. The Rat  likes to know who is on its side and will treat its most loyal friends with an extra  measure of protection and generosity.” (Chinese.astrology.com)

The rat, a fascinating character who is part of the ‘the real world’ and part of the underbelly. See, the rat is nothing to fear- as his child, I never have. In 2008, we must all meet and mingle with the rat. It’s his year.

That rat wears a long, tailored coat, waisted, but masculine, Matrix-like. This maze is populated with real characters, for the underworld is in our midst and not all that “under” after all. These things are all real, folks,: cities of the broken and the fierce, nearly universal. If anything else, the rat does not pretend he is not a part of the maze. He does not dismiss the crazy and the downtrodden as if they don’t exist.

I’ve lived in squats in New Orleans with ruffians of every ilk, made love in the dirt and there was nothing like it. I’ve climbed strange landscapes in New Mexico. It was so cold when we got there that it was snowing. Some crazy turquoise-wearing white healer type sleazebags guided us, fancying themselves gurus, but maybe in a small way that day, they were. I’ve spent a fare share of time in the lowest of the low, literally, Canada’s poorest postal code. I drank beer in those sullen saloons, like every other nutbar hippy in Vancouver, and I might do it again.  I sampled rice wine with a Native Canadian homeless addict named Joker, and we were ‘friends’ until he froze to death one winter, according to his pal. I’ve spent most of my dancing life in Madonna’s beat, and delighted in the brilliant madness of some crazy club kids. I’ve read the poets while in the gin mills of Atlanta, deciphered symbols, more signs that you would not even believe.

Rock stars, oil tycoons, graffiti lords, unheard of writers, ex-cons, old-school arcades bristling with truants, jazz singers, the brokenhearted… The rat is nothing sinister, after all: he simply exists in reality, which is always both fabulous and grim. 

I’m not sure I could find the words to describe how it felt once upon a time to be young and wild and literary in Toronto, but Lynn Crosbie sure did. The world really is haunted. Only a fool can deny it. Crosbie has the rat’s ability to navigate dangerous places, and shares his fascination with the underbelly. Her poems are at home in a place of addicts and karaoke and the murky minds of serial killers and whores. It’s the vastness of human history’s ineffable longing. It’s the world where dangerous poets and painters drink whiskey in parks and describe angels and demons. And Lynn Crosbie, here in this guise, is absolutely their queen.

Queen Rat: New and Selected Poems
Lynn Crosbie
House of Anansi, 1998

If you enjoyed experiencing Lynn Crosbie with writer Lorette C. Luzajic, you may enjoy further reading at www.thegirlcanwrite.net. You may also enjoy Lorette’s poetry, The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos. Famous writer Thomas Moore enjoyed it: he said, “Your book of poems is wonderful. I like the style very much. Imaginative,  witty, blessedly free of normal logic, surprising, profound, very human,  touching, sassy.” You can order my book online through indigo or amazon, or read more about it at my site.  xoxoxoxo