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The Three Times Rule by Becky Blake

 In the short story ‘The Three Times Rule’ written by Becky Blake (the winner of the 2012 CBC “Canada Writes” short-story prize), the narrator describes in a compact series of dialogue between a female and male figure and the internal and melodramatic struggle that arises from detaching oneself from the already-deadened (and perhaps geographically distant) past. The female character faces a heart-wrenching struggle in despair when she realises that she has been emotionally trapped in her carousel-like recollections of an “on-again off-again” casually sexual relationship with her friend, to whom she comes for physical and perhaps emotional unwinding, but in return he does not love her in the way she hopes and desires.  

The conceptual engendering of the female character’s own aging in response to how she is viewed and dehumanised as a woman as well as her cynicism about life remains an existential crisis in the framework of the story that begins to asphyxiate readers’ expectations from its very first line of conversing: “Euphemisms are for [expletive].”  Certainly this statement foreshadows the happy-sad duplicity of the story’s ending, which is an ending that teeters on a balance beam of learning to adapt and accept situations as they arise and fall in time.

Blake paints a portrait of what adaptation might be defined as by her female protagonist in very gently layered, yet coarsely textured brushstrokes of how adaptation to the unfamiliar is a frightening and inevitable circumstance in life that cannot be circumvented. Drawing on longing experiences of imagined yesteryears (“fantasizing”) is one of the fascinating snapshots of adaptation that Blake may have intended to embed implicitly within her work. Cultural and interpersonal adaptation is a part of life that transcends Canada’s national, social, and physical borders, since such a broad scope of defining the self focuses so sharply on the most vulnerable parts of each person's reality and what is perceived as real. Throughout the story there are implications that both characters have managed to find themselves physically involved with one another in time, though the female is perceived to be emotionally anchored to her fantasies of what their relationship actually was not – and defragments and relegates the insecurities of her emotive responses to her hyper-misinterpretations of ice skating with a person of the opposite sex (and in minor detail, the greenhouse effect and how it effects the livelihoods of Canadian moth species).   

The beauty of this text shows not only for and within its prosody, but also in its ability to capture one sensitive pastime that is cemented within Canadian identity, which is the perennial act of enjoying winter ice sports; the heightened recollected senses of smelling things and occurrences that have long since expired within nature (“ patch[es] of soft fur”); and finally, how this story in itself is more Canadian than it reads - if only the reader tenderly embraces their reading of the story as such.  A discourse and thought to take away from reading Blake’s story is that Canadian literature is becoming a delivered marvel (as we can see with the success Alice Munro’s recent Nobel Literature Prize win) that does not necessarily have to have spelled-out tropes and allegories to Canada, but as an art form, would do well to be accepted, disseminated, and read rather increasingly – both with and without adaptation.   

 Christine Odunlami

Story selection hyperlink source: http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2013/03/the-three-times-rule-by-becky-blake.html

Inter-media links, accompaniments, and things to enjoy:

Brief interview with Becky Blake by Open Book Toronto:

http://www.openbookontario.com/news/writing_cbc_short_story_prize_edition_becky_blake

Ice Skating at the Rideau Canal, Ottawa, Ontario Canada (a compilation video):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFONao8ayxY

“Embraceable You”, as performed by Ella Fitzgerald: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF1yQMPMEMo

"Lover's Game" by Geographer (song):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtqygWkyy8Y

The Greenhouse Effect in Canada: