red-handed

and all before us was the long dark night

2012-02-08T08:22:00.006-05:00

is it my fault that some days feel like murder?; acrylic paints and inks on untempered masonite board, 6 x 8 inches. In the shop.

* * * * *

Do you ever wonder what happens to femme fatales? Like high school football stars, they have their glorious moment of mayhem and bending weaker-thans to their will, but then what? Do they just adjust their game, and prey on older fools? Or do they go the way of the shabby crowd, macerated by age and all the other heavy gravity forces that seep and wreathe their way into us over time, winding down our thoughts and dreams and movements until it's all some grinding miasma of just wanting some peace and quiet and a decent chair?

like a gun, you put it to your head

2012-02-07T13:17:00.005-05:00

Do you ever see the light blinking on your answering machine but just walk away?

I do this all the time. I've done it my whole life.

Sometimes that light blinks for days. Who are you, and what do you want from me? Because I know you want something.

Even the message just saying hi is never really that.

Sometimes I even stop seeing the light after awhile. It's still blinking but I don't notice. Like a flaw in someone's face, it just starts being there.

I think I might be the last generation that is partly repelled by the phone.

I know there are good messages, things about winning or receiving, zipping around the communications stratosphere, but there must be something in my own phone that automatically deletes those.

ART LAB FOR KIDS

2012-02-06T09:08:00.002-05:00

L O O K : It's Art Lab For Kids, a book by (my friend) Susan Schwake. Honestly (and I'm not just saying this because I'm in it, as that's usually a negative), this is a *great* art instruction book -- not only for kids but for everyone. Like the best cookbooks, Susan breaks things down into their component parts and steps in an easygoing, fully illustrated manner, while the 'lab' aspect is the fun/experimental part! Most of all, what you come away with is a sense that art is just something that we all can (and should) do.

squirrelly

2012-02-01T08:30:00.006-05:00

Today I was *going* to post an entry entitled

THINGS I HAVE TO STOP DOING SO I WON'T BE SO ANGRY ALL THE TIME AND I DON'T SPEND ALL DAY IMAGINING MYSELF AS A GIANT RADIOACTIVE BEAR THAT BREATHES FIRE AND CAN MAKE PEOPLE'S EYES BLEED JUST BY THINKING ABOUT IT AND WHILE THEY ARE BLEEDING FROM SAID EYES I ENVELOPE THEM IN FLAMES AND THEN FEAST ON THEIR FIRE-BLACKENED BONES

and it was going to be quite a list, let me tell you.

But then Oona and I stopped to watch some squirrels this morning. There's a sprawling house just a bit kitty-corner to her daycare (I say 'sprawling' because it has, for example, a side veranda that goes on for about fifty feet) and it made C cry when it went on the market and it was too expensive for us (I didn't cry at all, having seen The Money Pit) and it's home to about a thousand squirrels of all shapes and sizes and many days these squirrels run relays on the telephone lines over the street, these leaping silhouettes racing back and forth, and sometimes there's so many running so many different ways that Oona and I just stop and watch and laugh and try to count them (badly).

So that lifted my mood.

Slightly.

you bring the rack, i'll bring the ruin

2012-01-30T08:20:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I think the whole thing is too rotten to stand. Because what do we have? 350 million North Americans with almost 90% of the world's wealth (don't talk to me about Mexico -- that's like purgatory with piñatas). An entire culture predicated on everybody wanting everything all the time. And no idea about dessert, other than I deserve it. We live in the most privileged society that has ever existed and yet all the (dying) bookstores are spilling with self-help titles, all because the (dying) middle class can't manage its own money. Or stop eating. And all our debates are about our neighbours getting away with something, or getting something for nothing, while the various star chambers use hundred dollar bills to stuff their pillows and dream only the sweetest dreams that only the born rich can know.

cleaning out the fridge

2012-01-28T13:21:00.006-05:00

Cleaning out the fridge on a Saturday morning is like holding a referendum on the food you eat:

was it worth it to make an entire 13x9 baking dish of string pie?⁽¹⁾

why do I keep buying yoghurt for my wife's 'healthy' smoothies only to end up throwing half of it away, unopened and past the due date?⁽²⁾

why does celery have to come in such big bunches?⁽³⁾

what good is it to buy perogies if my wife's just going to eat all the sour cream anyway?⁽⁴⁾

does jam ever go bad?⁽⁵⁾

I'm constantly trying to course correct with my grocery decisions, because I hate making big batches of things only to see them become garbage a week later.

* * * * *

⁽¹⁾Yes and no ... about three-quarters got eaten from the original supper plus taking it to work for lunch a few times.

⁽²⁾Because my wife likes to view her eating habits *optimistically*.

⁽³⁾Seriously -- I can *never* use it all.

⁽⁴⁾With ripple chips.

⁽⁵⁾It takes about a year (in the fridge).

contrapositive

2012-01-27T08:47:00.003-05:00

contrapositive; acrylic inks on paper, 8.75 x 6.25 inches. In the shop.

* * * * *

Working on some new things.

Having given up on "good daddy", I've started to share with Oona the idea of "poor daddy". Poor daddy. Always trudging through the snow, taking Oona to daycare, or taking her home, and struggling with groceries, while carefree mommy drives around town, although mostly to the liquor store. Poor daddy. Carrying his coffee and lunch to work, while mommy goes through the drive-thru, and throws her trash in the baby seat. Poor daddy. Never any cash in his wallet because mommy takes it to go out with her friends, or buy jewellery.

Also: the idea that "mommy" is a ghost (to be honest, I have no evidence that she isn't a ghost). "Who's that coming in so late?" I'll ask Oona, as I'm getting her ready for bed. "Mommy here! Mommy here!" Oona will say. "Are you sure? Because it could be a ghost," I'll say. And so on. I'm sure the mommy-ghost hypothesis will come in handy later on, to explain a certain someone's regular absences from attending soccer games, swim class, etc.

* * * * *

In all things, we leave verification of their logical equivalence as an exercise.

amazing

2012-01-26T09:00:00.004-05:00

amazing; pencil and crayon on Moleskine watercolour paper, 5.25 x 3.5 inches. An old favourite that has seen its summer day. In the shop.

ruined

2012-01-25T08:44:00.002-05:00

ruined; red acrylic ink on paper, 4.25 x 6.25 inches, page taken from an old English text book. In the shop.

JULY IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES

The summer days moved with the pace of a caged lion.
To stroll through crowds by the parkgates at dusk was a game:
O could we snatch out of that dusk a moment
That memory might, as food or whip-lash, tame.

To take what shape of cloud or smile was given
Was to stroll no longer the lost one's eyes
Upon us except obliquely, like next Autumn,
Last Spring that peered at Summer now through bars.

Mist rising up from the morning-warmed grass was a spector
That muffled the noise of nurses and nursed by sand.
Sycamore branches stuck outside the nightmare.
I traced them like the lines in the palm of my hand

Thinking someday under a sycamore I shall watch summers
Remembering with pride, with shame, the streets of Youth,
The cities that hummed with the din of their ruined lovers,
Traffic lights that shattered the dreaming dusk.

Truth that we look for in lilacs each spring changes color
When love is but a longing for something not said.
Often the telling of dreams is the great error:
The dream, like a perfect crime, must remain in the head.

And, as the pace of summer quickened I thought of what
hovered
Outside the simple joys till I knew that the knot,
The knots in dreams haven't come from defeat, but desire;
It is not within nightmares we walk alone, but without.

Sun hung high in the yellow six o'clock darkness;
Motorcars and crowds sawm in that light.
We still had the rest of July and all of August,
But the summerdusk darkens; leaves turn red overnight.

~ Claire McAllister

the tomboy

2012-01-24T08:45:00.004-05:00

the tomboy; acrylic inks on paper, 4.25 x 6.25 inches. In the shop.

THE TOMBOY

The tomboy, unhelmeted, a blow-locks hero,
aimed into bluebonnets, intent to bee-bee
an imaginary monster ...

~ William Burford

song

2012-01-23T10:20:00.004-05:00

i can't be talkin' of love, dear; red acrylic ink on paper, page taken from an old English text book, 4.25 x 6.25 inches. In the shop.

S O N G

I can't be talkin' of love, dear,
I can't be talkin' of love.
If there be one thing I can't talk of
That one thing do be love.

But that's not sayin' that I'm not lovin' –
Still water, you know, runs deep,
An' I do be lovin' so deep, dear,
I be lovin' you in my sleep.

But I can't be talkin' of love, dear,
I can't be talkin' of love.
If there be one thing I can't talk of
That one thing do be love.

~ Esther Mathews

eat popcorn and dream

2012-01-20T08:57:00.006-05:00

So many movies I've been meaning to write about. And then life happens. And winter! Fucking winter. So here's some mini-reviews.

Never Let Me Go
The class act of the bunch, like someone carefully folding a sweater and placing it across the back of a chair. A chair in gorgeous sunlight, and the saddest sweater you've ever worn.

Let Me In
The original Swedish version had excellent main characters and awfully weak secondary characters. This American remake fixes that, albeit with just slightly less charm (and a lot more 80's nostalgia).

Kid A
Do we deserve to escape our pasts? Maybe. Not.

The Headless Woman
C **loved** this movie, which is Argentinian with subtitles. I fell asleep.

Source Code
A watchable science fiction movie! It has Jake whats-his-face in it, and was directed by David Bowie's kid.

After Dark My Sweet
A noir movie where Bruce Dern is singularly creepy and Jason Patric is actually good. With Rachel Ward in wine-soaked decline.

The Ghost Writer
The real star of this movie is the house, which is a cross between the Kennedy Compound and the Führerbunker. Ewan McGregor is compelling, as always, although C's enjoyment of his nude scenes was tempered somewhat by her distaste for the film's director, Roman Polanski (otherwise known as "that horrible little dwarf").

You and Me and Everyone We Know
Worth it just for the poop scene.

The Town
Anyone from Boston is a thieving hoodlum, full stop. But hey, good on Ben Affleck for getting his career restarted.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Also saw the Swedish original, and thought it had more charm. But this American version is definitely bigger and slicker. Could it be anything else?

Centurion
A lot of action (plus Michael Fassbender! apparently!) but otherwise just empty calories.

* * * * *

The quotation in the blog title is from Sam Shepard, apparently.

parachute man

2012-01-19T11:18:00.007-05:00

A few weeks ago some media-savvy degenerates I know took a reading/recording of mine and, amazingly, added a soundtrack and video to it. It's now on YouTube. Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing, and the original recording was on a $19 mp3 player, so this has come a long, long way. Many thanks to Nathan for the ambient sound and Leah for the art-house video.

* * * * *

Also: check out my friend Jill's site today, as she explains why the "sleep-aid tapes" she gave me for Christmas are really nothing more than her telling me to do endless projects for her. Or at least she calls them "projects".

it's nice and sweet

2012-01-18T08:26:00.006-05:00

Delivered a triptych (three paintings than can hang together as one image) to friends of ours the other night. They have a new/remodelled home that is all big space and clean lines -- so I hope this textured, rough-and-ready painting is a good fit by way of contrast (as I worked on it, I had in mind the kind of worn-away mural you would find at a seaside). The place names on the bather's caps are some of the cities that our friends have lived in.

it's nice and sweet, mixed media on cradled wood panel; 60 x 40 x 1.5 inches; triptych; the string series continues.

* * * * *

While I'm here: artstream studios still has paintings of mine for sale and, as always with my work, they really are priced to *sell*. Also: the proprietor of the gallery, Susan Schwake, has a wonderful art-instruction book coming out soon, called Art Lab for Kids, and I'll have more on that later.

everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it

2012-01-17T08:42:00.003-05:00

This weekend felt, finally, like the first days of winter: a good foot of snow and that stinging crispness on your face. Saturday morning Oona and C helped me shovel the yard (not really). Later, I had a hot bath and a nap, and pretended to be a Finnish millionaire. Walking to the studio early Sunday and it was cold enough, despite longjohns and heavy pants, to make my legs stiff.

* * * * *

Will someone pleasepleaseplease phone the head honcho at CBC radio and let him know that jazz is dead. I mean, maybe he honestly doesn't know. Maybe nobody told him. Maybe he thinks that jazz is being played all over the country, right now, and people are calling into radio stations and requesting their favourite jazz songs, and that many of these radio stations are entirely dedicated to the jazz format, and that people are lining up outside jazz clubs, and buying jazz albums, and reading jazz magazines, and thinking serious thoughts about the nature and future of jazz. Jazz! Maybe he thinks that all the kids these days have posters of Miles Davis on their walls. Or maybe its worse than that. Maybe the head of the CBC is a jazz terrorist? Or maybe he's being victimized by jazz terrorists! Maybe his psyche has been telepathically kidnapped and is currently trapped in a sort of cerebral time machine set at 1958. Jazz!

Anyway, somebody should call him. Seriously.

* * * * *

Had to go to the Metro late Saturday afternoon (complicated story: because she was so late getting home from her Monday-night manicure -- too late for me to get groceries -- C had to get the groceries on Tuesday (her day off) but neglected to notice that I had specified *two* cans of cream of celery soup on the grocery list, and now, on Saturday, I needed the second can for my salmon-pasta 'catch of the day' casserole, yum!) and the place was mental. I mean, seriously mental, like lined up ten-deep. I know I always say "worse than the track" but I have no memory of said track (read: the horse races) ever being *that* bad, even on Chinese Lucky Dollar Day.

* * * * *

And now today it's mild again. Hovering around zero. The sidewalks like moats.

* * * * *

Also this morning they were talking more shit on the radio: people suddenly afraid/anxious about going on a cruise (because of this). How many people die on cruises every year? I bet more people die ballooning. What's next on the things-we're-afraid-of list? Toxic oil paintings? Fresh water crocodiles? Staple guns?

* * * * *

The quotation in the title is from a fellow named Charles Dudley Warner, apparently.

glitter

2012-01-16T10:12:00.008-05:00

More Oona art, and your guess is as good as mine. Exploding rainbow? Music sheet for March of the Spastics? Bird-shit storm? Back-alley seizure? I haven't reviewed the daycare's activity sheet lately, but I'll have to check if Unsupervised Model Building With Let's-Get-High Glue is on there.

* * * * *

Oona and C are going through some weird Kirk-Spock thing right now, where it's all negotiations, ultimatums, grievances, demands and mind-melds. Last night C slept on the couch because Oona kept calling for her (Mommy here, mommy here). Meanwhile, I was fast asleep. Why didn't you just tell her to shut the hell up? I wanted to ask, but didn't, because I wanted to get out the door in one piece.

* * * * *

Recently I told a friend of mine that fear is an essential parenting tool and she just looked at me the way suburban girls look at homeless people in front of Target -- that screwed-up face, I wish the world was just glitter kind of way.

fun weather storm days

2012-01-13T09:26:00.005-05:00

Stupid crazy wet-on-wet weather the last two days, although yesterday was clearly the puncher of the class: sticky rain that turned into ice and then built on the ice already there and the sidewalks tunnels of hidden slickness or just puddles thick with broken ice churning and all it soaking heavy and dark. Burning tractor trailers on the 401. Then warmer throughout the day, and walking home from the studio late last night I was startled by the random crashing all around, slabs of ice sliding off roofs or tree branches just giving up, everything either bent or cracking. I took Oona to daycare in the rain this morning, but when I came out of her building it was suddenly big snow, like shredded paper.

I need to buy some proper rain pants.

itch

2012-01-10T13:08:00.002-05:00

Illo for a story of the same name, acrylic ink on letraset paper.

* * * * *

Sending out a ton of work right now, just trying to get ahead of the February let's-kill-ourselves.

bear weekend

2012-01-09T11:10:00.006-05:00

So yeah: Oona and I were on our own this weekend, while C was away at a Toastmasters jamboree (can you imagine?). Oona and I were fine. We made bears out of plasticine. We made the computer talk to us. We tortured Dora. We ate our weight in butter.

C came home on Sunday afternoon. That night, even though we were both exhausted and low-key (she watched tv while I read), I tried to stick close, ask her about her weekend -- you know, be *present*. Why are you talking so much? C asked. Could you just shut up for awhile?

Tonight she's going to be late getting home, as she has a manicure/pedicure appointment. But I'll be home in time for supper, she said. Although I don't what you're going to make because there's fuck all in the fridge. When are you going to do the grocery shopping?

Then tomorrow night I can't attend my writer's group because she has another Toastmaster's gig (she's the area governor, whatever that hell that means).

On Thursday I might get to go to my studio after work, but only if I make sure there's left-overs (or pizza) for the ladies' supper.

Oh, and I still have my fun cough/cold. God, your cough sounds terrible, C said last night, turning up the volume on the tv.

daddy 1, magnum 0

2012-01-07T12:47:00.006-05:00

Just went up to put Oona down for her nap (a girl can only eat so much pizza and butter tarts before she gets sleepy) when we were confronted with Magnum, the sleazy Siamese, sitting (arrogantly) in her crib. Fucking cat. So I shook the crib (it's on wheels) to let it know I/we wanted it out. NOW. But it wouldn't get out. All right, I said, taking Oona back downstairs to get the spray bottle (because the only one who can pick up this cat is C, and she's gone for the weekend).

Well. About the best way to describe what followed would be something along the lines of what the Christians must have looked like in the Coliseum. At first, stoic with faith (or in this case, obstinate with stupidity) followed by brain-collapsing panic as the lions came bounding in (or one is repeatedly hit with aimed streams of cold water). He suddenly forgot how to get out, even jamming his head through the bars. Finally, he must have remembered -- Oh yeah, I actually performed a *bigger* leap to get in here -- and managed to jump out. A sheet was ripped. A nail was lost. And hopefully, someone will forever associate the crib with sheer, unbridled terror.

like (insane) chanting, only with exclamation marks

2012-01-07T12:36:00.004-05:00

Right now Oona is going through a repeating phase, as in

baby coat!
baby coat!
baby coat!
baby coat!

two babies!
two babies!
two babies!
two babies!

daddy coat!
daddy coat!
daddy coat!
daddy coat!

and so on. And almost always followed by the incomprehensible, such as

no baba puh!
no baba puh!
no baba puh!
no baba puh!
a danny!

and the only thing you can do -- if you want it to stop, if you want your brain to stop bleeding, and not go crazy, and set yourself on fire -- is to say, Yes, no baba puh, a danny, excellent, thank you for telling me that.

Now if you'll excuse me, *someone* just had a poo so egregious (and lingering) that I need to walk around with a lit match for awhile.

anna, snow

2012-01-06T08:58:00.004-05:00

anna; black acrylic ink on letraset paper, 8.25 x 11.5 inches. Used with permission, the original is here.

* * * * *

Walked home from the studio in a little snowstorm last night. Writers reach for all sorts of analogous descriptions for snow, but there really is nothing like that closed-in, cloaked feeling of a darkness enveloped with it. Soft and muted and lovely. The snow ploughs bumble by, like twitching rambly bots. Two big girls were having a fight outside a poutine shop, with a smaller girl hopping around them both. As I went by, the smaller girl said, Good luck getting laid without me!, and then the big girls started pushing each other. I guess Christmas must be over. I passed another person about two blocks from home, a guy wearing a hood and a ski mask even though it was the warmest it's been all week. Why are you wearing a ski mask? I wondered, until I was about half a block past him, and the thought finally came in.

blindekuh

2012-01-04T09:57:00.003-05:00

blindekuh; black acrylic ink on letraset paper, illo for a story (an old one now, but updated for a new collection).

* * * * *

First cold of the year, of the season. Actually snuck it in at the tail end of the 2011, a cough that started up from nowhere. You know: suddenly you're coughing. Taking NyQuil before bed and getting some sleep but trouble waking up in the morning and when I do wake up it's all slow legs and thoughts like rubber cement. I told this to C this morning and she asked me

So, do you feel foggy in the morning?
Me: Yeah, that's what I just said.
C: But do you feel foggy in the morning?
Me: Yeah. I do. Like I said. When I said that.

C does interviews for Profile Kingston and I always wonder if they go like this:

C: So, what are the ideas that you're most proud of?
Interview Subject: Well, it was my idea to invade Poland.
C: Anything else? Like, invading Poland, for example? Whose idea was that, anyway?

A doctor recently warned me against taking too many decongestants so I'll probably try to sleep sans drugs tonight, which has not been that successful lately, so wish me luck.

some parting thoughts

2012-01-03T10:38:00.005-05:00

First and foremost (mom), I've uploaded a whack of Oona Christmas-parcel-opening videos here. She is only slightly mental in this batch, although the cookie-eating one is a pretty egregious.

* * * * *

So how were your holidays? I went into work for a few days in the middle of mine, and they were still entirely too long.

I think this might be my *working* time in life. Meaning: right now, it seems the only thing I want to do is finish certain things. I have projects. I have stories I want to write, and others I need to complete, and things I want to draw and others I want to paint. And all of this is pretty much disengaged from notions of accomplishment, or achievement, because I fully understand the way failure stalks every creative enterprise. For me, finishing a story and seeing it in print is the whole thing. I never expect any kind of reward or prize beyond that. It's just seeing it through, seeing the idea fully realized.

Most people go through this kind of working phase in their mid- to late thirties but I've always been behind the curve on everything. Slow starter, and sometimes just slow.

* * * * *

My friend Jill has put together some thoughts on regret and rumination. She considers these kinds of things, and is probably a better person for it.

* * * * *

Do you think it would be over the top if I converted to Germanic Neopaganism just to avoid Christmas? I mean, I'm *really* struggling here. C says she went through this in her twenties (like I said, I'm slow) and in the end she just decided to make the holiday about a few things she likes (the tree, the lights, chocolate, screenings of White Christmas, the kind of quantities of wine that require a tap, etc) and ignore everything else. What she did, in effect, was make up a new holiday *within* the existing one. Her own private holiday. But this doesn't really cut it for me. It would be like me telling everyone that I respect Remembrance Day, when really I'm only thinking about it as a day that I spend in my pajamas playing Nobunaga's Ambition.

* * * * *

So why hate Christmas?

Because there's no escaping. You *have* to participate. If you tell someone that you don't care for Easter, and they ask you why, and you explain that you're not religious, and that you find the imagery of the resurrection (torture, blood, death, undeath, etc) of questionable value, then your friend will just shrug and say, Okay, fair enough. But if you say you don't care for Christmas, then your friend will call you a monster.

Because you can't travel (crowds, madness, bad weather, price gouging, etc).

Because you can't go into a store (see above).

Because you can't go anywhere *near* a post office.

Because the music keeps getting worse and worse.

Because people obsess. And stress. And feel real internal damage when things go wrong, and the flight is cancelled, or the dinner is overcooked, or the children behave badly (because they got so many gifts that they went into meltdown mode around mid-morning, and had to take a nap).

Because you overindulge, and overeat, and overspend, and then feel guilty about it. And then come the resolutions, as bright and shiny and flimsy as christmas crackers.

Because it forces compromised decisions. Try, just for a moment, to inhabit the mind of the 38 year-old single woman who has to fly across the country to spend Christmas with her elderly parents, because they have no one else, and are slightly crazy, and will spend most of the holidays making not-so-discreet enquiries as the state of her love life, and the chances of them getting a grandchild before they die.

Because there are parties. At work. With your coworkers. Notice I wrote 'coworkers' and not 'friends'.

Because people make gestures that are both needless and unreciprocated.

Frank: Where are you going?
Doris: I'm going out to get a present for Uncle Peter.
Frank: Uncle Peter! But we never hear from him. And he's missed all the kid's birthdays. Forever. And a war crimes tribunal just convicted him of genocide.
Doris: But we *have* to get him a present!
Frank: Why?
Doris: Because it's Christmas!

Because people say stupid things. O, I hope it snows for Christmas, I sure hope it's a white Christmas. O me, too. I hope there's a virtual white-out at the airport, and the highways are fluffy tunnels of death. It's not like we won't be looking at snow for the next four months!

Because everyone acts like a retarded fifth-grader who needs to poop.

Because it gives me a pressure headache.

Because everything becomes stupidly tragic. Not a chest cold! Not on Christmas!

Because it's absolute hell on people who are alone, or just lonely.

Because people use it as an excuse for all sorts of stupid behavior. Of course I climbed up on the roof to fix the lights. It's Christmas! And now I'm dead.

Because it's wasteful.

Because Peace and Goodwill towards men could apply to anything. Why Christmas? Why not next fucking Tuesday?

* * * * *

Okay, I'm done beating up on the baby Jesus and the Fat Man. I hope everyone's credit cards will be usable again by spring.

well thank christ that's over with

2011-12-30T11:47:00.006-05:00

Santa: just one more guy who likes to sneak around my house.

* * * * *

Ah, Christmas. It was wet and it was green. I wore my t-shirt inside-out (which C said was very 80's), went for a run, nearly died (see: run), got called a grinch because I wanted Oona to actually *look* at each toy she was given, yet the mad wrapping-paper-ripping continued, watched Oona's eyes quickly empty of all meaning and comprehension, presided over her (completely expected) consecutive meltdowns, ignored C's attempts to make me look at the IKEA catalogue, planned supper, made supper, we had stuffed turkey breast and baked butternut squash and peas (for C, these must be from Quebec) and extra stuffing and cranberry sauce and gravy, and it all came out fine and lovely and we sat down to eat, and Oona melted down again, and refused to eat any supper, and C and I tried to ignore her, and we talked about how awful Christmas music is, and I said I didn't understand why most of it is made, because it's being made by people like Bryan Adams, and does he really emerge from the recording studio and think, Well, I've really added to the musical legacy of Christmas with that little ditty, because if he does then he needs his fucking head examined, and don't say word one about money because that guy has more free cash than a dozen British bankers, and if he *is* only doing it for the money then that should tell you more about "the season" than anything else you need to know, and then we had dessert, and Oona licked out the filling of her pumpkin pie, and then I'd had enough of that so I took her upstairs where I got to watch her sit on the potty and poop ("No, you can't get up -- I know you have another one in there"), and then she had a long bath, and then I took her out and wrapped her in towels and dried her off on the bed, and then she got to look at her new books, and she melted down one more time, and then I put her to bed, and then that was it, Merry Christmas.

* * * * *

Here's a *non*-melting-down moment, from the middle of the day, before I started to cook. More to follow (mom).

sneak attack trickery style

2011-12-20T09:37:00.004-05:00

Sneaky? Manipulative? I don't care. Because sometimes, if you *really* want your niece to write to you, you have to provide your own self-addressed, stamped postcard.

the myth of bad daddy

2011-12-14T08:51:00.006-05:00

Due to some rather unfortunate *disinformation* that has proliferated lately, I've been forced to post this video in order to set the record straight. Watch and weep, good-daddy naysayers.

. . . . . .

2011-12-12T14:46:00.002-05:00

why i like this

2011-12-08T08:42:00.004-05:00

Because it's nearly flawless. Because it's the perfect coalescence between the classic and the modern, between the organic and the mechanical. Because that gorgeous yellow has real vibrancy, and actual shades within it, and that red 'x' has just the right gestural quality. Because there are just a few elements at work here, and they're all working together. Because it's simple. Because it's Bette Davis, and that look is so iconic.

what I watch when the person I'm watching the movie with doesn't want to watch (the movie)

2011-12-05T08:34:00.005-05:00

Watched District 9 the other night. Thought C might half-like it because she has half-liked other science fiction stuff before (albeit randomly).

Boy was I wrong.

When C isn't interested in a movie you're watching, several things will happen, often all at the same time:

++ letting the cats in, then out, then in again, then out

++ talking to cats

++ anecdote time! with this movie, it was all sorts of information about the giant slag heaps of Johannesburg

++ getting up to go get snacks

++ eating snacks

++ complaining that I bought the wrong kind of dip

++ asking if there's anything (else) to drink in the house, and does it taste any good?

++ going to check on (snoring) Oona every five minutes

++ sleeping

++ snoring

I'd like to tell you if the movie was any good, or even what it was about (aliens? ghostbusters?) but there was too much going on around me to really pay attention.

early theories of the universe

2011-12-02T14:12:00.003-05:00

acrylic inks on old textbook (astronomy) paper

* * * * *

There's a member of our writing group who is always bringing in poems about stars. Whenever she hands me a copy of her work, I ask, "Is this about stars?", and she usually laughs and says yes. Sometimes I'm even looking for the poem to be about something else, and I'm not quite getting it, and she'll say, "Nope, it's just about stars."

I guess if you're going to get lost in a subject, the cosmos is as good as anything. It has a certain ... vastness. And the language, while viscous in that blackly scientific way, is at the same time enigmatic and quite beautiful:

supernova remnant, accretion disk, event horizon, cepheld variable, chasma, faculae, gamma-ray, lunation, penumbra, right ascension.

So while the meaning sometimes escapes me (in poems the metaphors seem to come spinning at you in whole clusters), I'm learning to appreciate the musicality of the words themselves, and that is often more than enough.

some thoughts on shopping

2011-12-01T08:54:00.003-05:00

Have you ever gone to the food court before the rest of the mall opens? There are two types of people around:

(a) people who obviously work there and
(b) people who obviously don't work anywhere (old people, disabled people, strange people)

* * * * *

Is the Sears business model entirely predicated on sales? I can't remember the last time I was in there when there wasn't a sale going on. Heaps and heaps of pressed polyester pants, all 40% off.

* * * * *

O look, Orange Julius still exists. Huh.

* * * * *

And HMV. How the fuck are they still viable?

* * * * *

In line in EBGames and I could not hack it, had to abort. It wasn't even a line, really. But the geek quotient was absolutely off the scale -- coughers, mumblers, gigglers, stinky boy-men in dirty sweats and facial hair that made me think of insincere rounds of chemo.

* * * * *

Jesus, only 10:30 and it's already getting busy.

* * * * *

Why are these old ladies carrying their own little chairs?

* * * * *

Who puts a library right next to the mall? O right, the suburbs.

* * * * *

C *hates* the mall. I don't hate it so much as it just makes me bleary-eyed, and all my insides sore. But now I'm done.

when the getting is good

2011-11-24T09:08:00.006-05:00

C had Toastmasters this morning (a particular kind of crazy, which is getting up early to get ready and get out the door and then driving to a meeting to deliver a speech ... before work ... there was a time last week when she three Toastmaster meetings in the space of 24 hours) so it was just Oona and I, which is always extra fun, because it means getting her up and getting her changed and getting her dressed and getting her fed and getting her in her boots and parka and snowpants (!) and toque and scarf and mitts and getting her into the stroller and getting her not to whine about the mitten clips on her parka and getting her to daycare and getting her out of her toque and scarf and mitts and parka and snowpants (!) and filling her cubby with extra diapers and pants and underwear and signing her in and then trying to get away without her throwing a fit and then putting away the stroller in the outside locker and then walking to work. Wait eight hours, then repeat in reverse. And I wonder why I feel fuzzy after supper sometimes.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GUY WHO FARTED (SO EGREGIOUSLY) IN THE HISTORY STACKS AT THE DOWNTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY YESTERDAY

2011-11-24T08:36:00.006-05:00

Sir (and I use that term loosely),

Why history?

Sincerely,
DJB

p.s. Please stay out of the graphic novels section.

p.s. Also, you smell like you're dying.

last call

2011-11-18T08:07:00.007-05:00

How nice it was, to see Ian Colford's review of my book in the current issue of The Fiddlehead. I have a special fondness for this New Brunswick magazine; it was the first outfit I ever sent my writing to -- a wee poem, called "The 7 of Cups" -- and it was, somehow, wondrously, accepted for publication. This is easy! I thought, for about five minutes, or until I sent the next thing out. (I've had poets tell me that they *hate* me for that anecdote, but then I tell them that I very quickly got out of the verse business, when I realized I didn't possess the necessary brain voltage.)

Anyway: it's a very kind review, packaged with two other collections (R.W Gray's Crisp and Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod) and the general premise that there is hope yet for the short-story form. Some excerpts ...

Quirky does not even begin to describe these stories, which, though they take place in a world recognizably our own, depict that world through a series of skewed, sometimes diseased, perspectives that twist reality into odd shapes and leave it bruised and bleeding on the ground. There is an unfiltered rawness to Berger's writing that is disorienting at the start but which, as we read further, becomes almost familiar, almost consoling. Eventually, in the world he sets up, the bizarre becomes habitual: we expect China to invade India. We expect the bombs to fall.

and

Berger writes like an anarchist plotting mayhem, his stories routinely deviating from the norm, venturing into uncharted territory where they live or die on their own terms. At their best, the stories break with tradition in a manner that seems not only natural but inevitable, and the reader finishes them with his mind open to new possibilities. When Berger fails, it's often because he's stretching an already thin premise beyond the breaking point or too obviously trying to shock the reader into submission. But this does not diminish the triumph that Punishing Ugly Children represents. This book adheres from start to finish to its author's bracingly fresh and idiosyncratic vision. Adventurous readers will want to pick it up, if only for the thrill of getting in on the ground floor or something new and strange.

So there you have it. Probably the last review I'll see for this title, so I thought I'd make a splash of it. Also: buy the book! For Christmas! And if you order it from me, I'll tuck in all sorts of other good things, like fridge calendars or art cards or who knows? It's a surprise!

Okay. Thanks and everyone have a good weekend.

is that a haiku in your pocket?

2011-11-17T14:02:00.004-05:00

hearing the silence by Philomene Kocher; King's Road Press

It's amazing to me that quiet little books like this even get made anymore.

the sun
enters my room
tulip by tulip

Or that the haiku form still exists in this restless, noise-diffused world.

I catch him
watching me
watch someone else

why i like this

2011-11-16T09:02:00.006-05:00

Flickr is fairly groaning under the volume of naked girls, a great many of whom are submerged within the notion that they are creating 'art' (the rest are just sharing straight-up pornography, for whatever reasons). But mostly what you get is a lot of naked girls wearing antlers, naked girls in the cemetery, naked girls on the beach, naked girls in wheat fields, in the forest, in their bedroom, with a mirror, in an old car, smoking too much, etcetera, etcetera. So to see something original in the naked-girl genre is rather arresting. And this photograph does that with light and perspective. That's it. And with just those two elements, this girl becomes a tower of sinister mystery.

* * * * *

By the photographer April-Lea. You can see her flickr stream here, but I'll warn you that the content is adult.

not with a bang but a whimper

2011-11-14T08:58:00.005-05:00

A friend of mine blew up last week. Worse yet, she blew up all over Facebook.

People don't deal well with anger/anguish anymore. It makes them deeply uncomfortable. Anger, especially, is bad. It's so negative! And being negative is about the worst thing you can be these days.

Being explosive or enraged or negative on Facebook -- the great flattener, our new social amplifier and distiller -- is like performing Arthur Kirkland's opening statement for a children's birthday party. On a cancer ward. In an orphanage.

Facebook is 'liking' things. Facebook is pictures of cats being hopelessly (read: charmingly) fat or destroying things. Facebook is inspirational sayings like, "What matters most is how you see yourself" (I think Kim Jong-il has that one taped to his bathroom mirror). Facebook is 'funny' quips like, "When life feeds you lemons, smile as you are having to pucker up!" (motivating and almost literate). Facebook is everyone telling everyone else how great their book or cd is, or how wonderful their new mixed-media collage is, or what a fantastic job they're doing, or how pretty they are. Hurray for everything!

So when someone goes off the rails, and spits venom all over her news feed, it's a bit disconcerting.

My friend was angry and upset because her relationship ended and she perceives herself as being wronged. I don't know how true this is, but I do know that in the end it doesn't matter, because done is done, and time will prove this out. In the meantime, I hope she can stop detonating on Facebook.

It's not that it bothers me at all -- any web/marketing 'expert' would be absolutely horrified by my own pessimism, and fatalism, and (lack of) self-promotion skills, and I frequently get myself into trouble for not playing nice (and for my all-round smart-ass-ery) -- but I just don't think she's going to get any satisfaction from doing this, because it's a shallow venue not worthy of her anger.

Besides, these kinds of things can only properly be screened to an audience of one. And after awhile you put that tape away, and get on with life, in all three of its dimensions.

the fountain

2011-11-11T21:09:00.005-05:00

A million years ago, someone told me that I should rent The Fountain. So, the other night, when I needed a third rental (our video store has a three-for-five-bucks deal), I retrieved this slow-acting command like some kind of entertainment sleeper agent and checked the thing out.

We watched it tonight. Well, *I* watched it, because I doubt that even C can take in a movie and snore at the same time.

And um ... yeah. A very beautiful, slow motion rock video, only with dialogue instead of music. Death is life, love is eternal and there you go. Oh, and don't ever drink the sap from the Tree of Life.

remembrance day

2011-11-11T06:02:00.005-05:00

There's a small poppy below the Google Search button this morning, to remind us that it's Remembrance Day. Also, I get the day off work. Most people will not. The library is closed. The colleges and universities are not. There will be many grand ceremonies, and everyone will wear that bit of red plastic, and the public consciousness will be improved very slightly, on the level of a manicure.

I always thought we would be better off with a day of education, where the emphasis is less on the fallen-heroes business and more on taking a hard look at how awful the whole business actually is, complete with pictures of cities that look like graveyards and fellows with their faces blown off. Show us what it takes to make and deliver a proper bomb, and what happens when you drop it on someone's house. Tell us what's it's like to get shot through the neck. Yes, the poems and trumpets are fine, and that should all be part of it, but we should also know what it means to be on a burning ship at sea in the middle of the night. And that might actually accomplish something.

Come along, Dorothy. You don't want any of those apples.

2011-11-09T09:09:00.007-05:00

I had a woman come up to me in the supermarket the other day. In fact, she came right up to me and said, "Gosh you're tall. You're so tall."

I looked down at her and smiled, and then waited for the inevitable request to get something off the top shelf. But she just turned and walked away.

I think she was carrying a box of beans.

* * * * *

I see my home-province brethren voted in droves for the Saskatchewan Party on Monday. Oh dear. The last time they went at it blindly like this, for Grant Devine's Progressive Conservatives in 1982, it eventually led to 13 Conservative MLAs and staffers being charged with expense account fraud, and the party imploded ... to reinvent itself as the Saskatchewan Party.

* * * * *

I didn't see the election results in real time because I was too busy watching Mel Gibson's The Edge of Darkness. I had to watch it alone; on a personality chart, C places Mel Gibson somewhere between Idi Amin and John Gotti. Personally, I consider Woody Allen to be at least twenty times the monster, and everyone seems to have forgiven him. But anyway: it wasn't a bad movie. Exactly medium, actually. Mel goes around exacting revenge. The end. And Ray Winstone was good.

smokin' joe

2011-11-08T08:29:00.003-05:00

Joe Frazier died. "Smokin' Joe" was one of the great heavyweight boxing champions (back in the day when those kind of things were undisputed, or even mattered). In the ring, he was a stalking monster with loaded doom in his left hand.

You'll hear a lot of nice things about Joe today, but what you won't hear a lot about is how much he hated Muhammad Ali. *Hated*. He could just as easily have hated George Foreman, who both took away his title and ended his career (and was a bit of beast himself back then, instead of the genial George we have today), but no -- Joe saved up all his venom for Ali.

Frazier fought Ali three times, beating him once (with a trip to the hospital for good measure). In real terms, they beat each other senseless -- Ali called their Thrilla in Manilla "the closest you can be to death".

Why all the hard feelings? Ali liked to describe Frazier with words like ignorant, gorilla and Uncle Tom.

So Frazier went into the ring trying to kill him.

Years later, he wouldn't even defer to call him Muhammad Ali; he called him Cassius Clay instead. When Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, Frazier told a reporter that he would like to throw Ali into the fire. Which would have make him Smokin' Ali, I guess.

* * * * *

The winner of the calendar draw is Sheri. Yay, Sheri!

the rules for werewolves

2011-11-03T19:10:00.008-04:00

So: today I had to go to the post office. The proper downtown post office. And because I love to learn, I came away from the experience with a few rules.

Rule #1

Going to the downtown post office is a terrible idea. Never go to the main post office. The clerks at the main post office are werewolves, and they hate you. They want to destroy you. Consequently, the clerks at the main post office will always figure out the slowest and most expensive way to send your mail. Yesterday, for example, I had two small padded envelopes to mail, and because these envelopes were *slightly* thicker than the ones I normally use, the clerk gave me a price that was three times what I normally pay. We're talking less than a centimetre here. Maybe four or five millimetres. But she did that thing where she half-heartedly tries to fit it through the mail slot (who the fuck has a mail slot anymore, anyway? and what does this magical slot signify?) and it caught at the edges and all of a sudden it's a 'small packet', and it's three times what I normally pay. Uh, no, I said.

Rule #2

If you need to use the services of Canada Post, go to a postal counter -- the kind you find at the back of a drugstore (in Canada, that pretty much means Shoppers Drug Mart). But even here, you have to be careful, because some clerks at drugstore postal counters are part-time werewolves, and their efforts to destroy you are casual -- sometimes you'll get cooperation, sometimes you won't. If they bring out the tape measure, run.

I have a guy, at my favourite postal counter, and because he is *not* a werewolf I can almost always get my drawings and cigar-tin stories mailed for between $3 and $5 (again, using the right padded envelope), but by the time I got to him today the mail had already gone out, and my 'small packets' needed to reach their destination by Wednesday.

Rule #3

You have to ask. You have to ask the question at hand. So I asked the werewolf clerk at the main post office, Will these get to Ottawa by Wednesday?

Uh ..., she said.

Uh, no, I said.

Rule #4

Seek alternate solutions. So I ended up putting both 'small packets' inside an express-letter envelope. And the cost of this was a dollar more than sending one of them as regular 'small packets'. And they will get there by Monday. And how the fuck does any of *that* make sense?

Werewolves.

One of my younger brothers just mailed me a laptop computer. And it cost him $27. Whereas my 'small packets', which weighed about as much as an empty beer can, would have cost $9. Each. And how the fuck does *that* make sense?

Werewolves.

p.s. I'm making the draw for the fridge calendar this weekend. If you are not a werewolf, and care to keep track of time in a human, non-biting way, then leave a comment in the last post.

free like greek

2011-11-02T10:48:00.006-04:00

Well!!!

Those Greeks. Balking at the idea of decades of indentured servitude. To the banks! The good-natured, well-wishing, let's-have-a-hug banks. Ah, the banks. Don't they understand that bankers need love (read: all your money), too? Don't they understand that nothing (read: slavery, dreams, etc) is free? Unless, of course, it's money for the banks. Then it's totally free. Wheeeeee!!!
Also free is this 2012 laminated fridge-magnet calendar. Leave a comment below and I'll toss your name into a draw.

Plus, for all November and December, this calendar is included with every purchase from my shop.

Wheeeeee!!!

I don't get it.

2011-10-31T08:37:00.016-04:00

I've been working with a friend of mine on a branding project, and along the way we've been talking about digital things, like websites and social media. And at one point my friend -- who knows me and my work quite well, and has a lot of it in her house -- said, "And you use a flickr site too, right?"

And this got me thinking. Because to me, my flickr site is as obvious as my right arm.

And then this weekend, while C and I (and Oona) were driving up to Ottawa to attend her sister's pumpkin-carving party (and no, I did not disrupt the proceedings by pouring gasoline over my head and setting myself on fire, so perhaps I am growing up), and the two of us were just chatting, rather happily, or so I thought, I happened to ask her if she saw the little tumblr site I put together to catalogue the work I currently have for sale. And her reaction went like this

I don't know. I don't know if I saw it. I don't understand. I don't get tumblr. I don't get it. I thought I was on some tumblr site and then I clicked something and all of a sudden I wasn't. I don't know how to answer you because I don't understand. I don't get it.

And while she was sitting there talking like my mom if I put her in front of a bank machine, I got busy thinking some more.

Because there's a couple of problems here.

* * * * *

The first one is this: while it seems clear and obvious to me where my work exists, and how to find it, this must not be the case. Because people are still confused.

The second problem: I am using digital forums that people are staying away from because they don't "get" them. Because they feel intimidated by them, or they don't understand what their point is, or even why they exist.

So let me explain.

* * * * *

My tumblr site is new. I created it as a catalogue of work I have for sale. Some of this work is available from artstream studios, some from my Etsy store, and some directly from me. This is a static site, which means there is no interactivity (like leaving comments). Think of it as a brochure, or a flier, or anything that someone would hand you and say, "If you like my work, this is how you can buy it." That's all it is -- a digital envelope with pictures of work inside of it.

* * * * *

My flickr site is a portfolio site: here is where I archive all of my work. I have a section for my string-series paintings, another one for my drawings, for the artwork that was in my book, etc. This is where you can find everything.

* * * * *

I also have an Etsy shop. This is a shop I use for small (physically small) items I have for sale, like my math-paper drawings or my cigar-tin stories. Think of it as a lemonade stand, where I might be selling some cookies as well, but I didn't bring all my comic books or my old GI Joe's or a hundred other things I could be selling. Why do I use Etsy as a vendor? Because it exposes my work to the kind of people who shop on Etsy, that's why (plus it's a very easy way to sell: no back-and-forth with emails, just click your way to the check-out).

* * * * *

Then we have this site, my Blogger site. This is a diary site. Certainly, I share a lot of artwork here. But I also put up pictures of my wife, and my daughter. And I think out loud about important things like the Olympics, red-heads or
Phil Collins. This is where I get to abuse the limits of good taste on the wonderful worldwide web, just because I can.

* * * * *

And then I have a couple of Facebook pages.

I have a personal page, as in just for me as a person, as an individual, and I use this mostly just to give people a hard time and act like an all-around jackass. Because, you know, it's Facebook. And if you take Facebook seriously, then you've got a problem, and you should de-friend me *immediately*.

I have a Facebook page for my artistic work. This is solely for sharing creative work with people on Facebook. I don't know how else to put it. I mean, I draw something, and then I post it to Facebook. Because that's what you do with work. You share it. Otherwise, you end up like this fellow.

And then I have a Facebook page for my book, Punishing Ugly Children. Why? Because here I can share excerpts, or artwork I created as part of the launch, or any news, or just anything relevant to my writing. It's just what you do, these days.

* * * * *

I won't even get into things like LinkedIn or Saatchi Online or Whohub or Gravatar or any of that hoo-ha. These days a person could work full-time just propagating some kind of online persona, and I hardly have time enough to make myself a proper lunch.

Today it's a peanut-butter sandwich. And a pickle.

My wife does not look after me.

2011-10-28T09:11:00.002-04:00

all painted up and no place to go

2011-10-27T09:15:00.009-04:00

cigar-tin story #124; gifted to a friend

* * * * *

O God sometimes I wish we had a serious radio service in this country. Right now, if I want to hear Dead or Alive sing You Spin Me Round, I have a number of venues to get that. Including, sometimes, our national broadcaster. The other day I even heard it play a cover version of a LOVERBOY SONG.

A LOVERBOY SONG.

It was the "Kid is Hot Tonight" and it was "redone" by a band called Chixdiggit, and it was karaoke fucking awful.

And this is frustrating, because while you do get some coverage of important things like the recent earthquake in Turkey (albeit, abbreviated all to fuck), it's often mashed in with stories about Beavis and Butt-head, what Halloween costumes are popular this year, and some charity trying to raise money for a cat's brain transplant.

Okay, I made that last one up.

But it's still bullshit. I know, I know -- I've banged this drum before. But instead of this general-format, a-little-of-everything-and-a-lot-of-nothing, something-for-everyone, pop-culture junky-ness (why does CBC radio even bother to report on sports at all?), why doesn't the Mother Corp grow into some big-girl pants and have some full-time identity, instead of relegating it to Sunday mornings and late at night?

Where's the in-depth explanation of what the European debt crisis means? Where's the real reporting on why soldiers are using people for target practice in Syria? Where's Elie Wiesel talking about the Holocaust, or Harold Bloom talking about Blood Meridian? Why is the National Research Council developing electrically conductive cement that will block electromagnetic pulses? What will it mean when the planet achieves seven billion people?

Don't even get me started about the bees.

I know, I know -- I can go elsewhere for that stuff. I can read The Economist. But then again, my taxes don't go to support The Economist. And wouldn't a CBC that was just talking heads be a lot cheaper to run?

Anyway: the earthquake in Turkey reminded me of a list I read recently, from an issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, about the top ten deadliest disasters since 1970 ...

1970 Bhola cylcone, 300 000 deaths, Bangladesh

1976 Tangshan earthquake, 255 000 deaths, China

2010 earthquake, 222 570 deaths, Haiti

2004 Boxing Day tsunami, 220 000 deaths, Indonesia and Thailand

2008 tropical cyclone Nargis, 138 300 deaths, Burma

1991 tropical cyclone Gorky, 138 000 deaths, Bangladesh

2008 Great Sichuan earthquake, 87 449 deaths, China

2005 Kashmir earthquake, 73 300 deaths, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan

1970 Ancash earthquake, 66 000 deaths, Peru

2010 Northern Hemisphere summer, 55 630 deaths, Russia

How many of these do you remember? Half of these disasters happened in the last six years. It's a bit ... tilting, isn't it?

My other reactions ...

-- Clearly, earthquakes and cyclones are the grand dames of death here.

-- There are no terrorist attacks on this list.

-- If God does exist, he clearly has some kind of problem with China and Bangladesh.

-- I really had *no* idea *that* many people died in Russia that summer. Absolutely none. But this should hardly be a surprise. It was probably reported, once or twice, and then got lost in the shuffle of stories about lipstick and Avril Lavigne's career (she's from Canada!).

Everyone decries that the general tone is going lower, that everyone is getting dumber. Christ I wonder why.

Aron Wiesenfeld

2011-10-26T22:03:00.005-04:00

Snowbed; oil on canvas, 27 x 33 inches, Aron Wiesenfeld 2011 (detail).

I don't know this fellow from Adam but I stumbled across his work and rather liked it. You can see more of it here.

Saturday

2011-10-25T10:06:00.004-04:00

Oona needs clothes. She's *supposed* to need 2T clothes but sometimes the size is 18-24 months because this kid never eats and therefore has no hips and little more than a chicken bum. So we all go out to the stores on Saturday morning. This is about buying clothes for Oona, I remind C.

BIG SALE (it's nearly always a big sale, everywhere these days) at Old Navy. For about $150, we get five pairs of pants, four pairs of socks, two pairs of pyjamas, a hat, a parka, some gloves, and some long-sleeved shirts.

At Winners, Oona and I wander around the toy section while mommy tries on coats. We test a championship wrestling belt that plays old-school red-dot animations on the buckle.

At the Sears furniture outlet (see how we're getting off target here?), I wonder about their choice of soft-rap jazz for the ambient music.

No, I am not buying a new couch today. Yes, I will think about it. Thank you.

At the mall, C wanders around wide-eyed in the new H&M store. The entire world is going flannel.

C wants to go for lunch but the clock has tick-tick-ticked down on the Oona Insane-o-Meter and she is simultaneously falling asleep and melting down. I pull the plug. On the way home, I talk to Oona in the rearview mirror and reach back with one hand to shake her leg and try to keep her awake -- the *very* worst thing is to let her have a fifteen-minute nap, because then she will be awake all day and crankier than Hitler.

C suggests that she could have a ten-minute nap in the car and that we could still go out for lunch. I picture Oona in the restaurant, throwing food and cutlery on the floor and screaming/whining at the serving staff. I think we'll just go home, I say.

At home, I get some lunch into Oona and then put her to bed.

For the next two hours, she refuses to nap.

Also, taking off our diaper is now a *lot* of fun, especially if it has poop in it.

C has her own nap while I hang with Oona, listening to her explanations as to why napping is passé. C sleeps well, no doubt dreaming about the new coat she got and the new couch (and maybe kitchen set) she still plans to get.

and how will i know which one is me?

2011-10-24T08:24:00.008-04:00

Two days off last week. Sick anyway but really more a case of being psychically exhausted. Did say no to a few people, which felt good, and helped somewhat. Working a couple of jobs and playing several roles for quite awhile now and this constant switching between kitchens, all of which demand at least smoke coming out of the chimney, is spiritually pauperizing. You have your lists but the cupboards are bare.

* * * * *

Knew I'd get sick. The week before the office was regularly twelve, thirteen, fourteen degrees Celsius. Then they got the heat on, and within an hour it was thirty-two. At one point, a co-worker in the next cubicle coughed for two minutes straight. I've avoided going that low, with sleep and massive doses of zinc, apple cider vinegar and ginseng, but by eight at night my eyes have more soft focus than a dream sequence from Dallas.

* * * * *

My wife washed my notes journal for me (yes, I am that kind of nerd). It was in the front pocket of a shirt hanging over a chair. No, I did not ask her to wash it. And before you all start stomping around like Germaine Greer after too many estrogen treatments, I am more than capable of doing my own laundry. My wife likes to do laundry (I do the cooking, she does the laundry). Unfortunately, she likes it a bit too much, and grabs everything in sight -- she will often wash all the towels in the house, all at once, so that I'm left walking around with my wet hands in the air like a blind surgeon.

* * * * *

Blind or not, having walked countless miles throughout the downtown, at all hours of the day, it strikes me as misguided for people to be afraid of going there at night, when really your only trouble is with drunks, and even those are just Queen's students. Sure they're loud, and grossly stupid, and they love to pee on things and dump chips with gravy on your car. But in the end they're just middle-class spaz-wads. People ought to be much more afraid of the early morning, when the *real* mental deviants are stumbling around, in droves, like zombies, with no place to go, and no idea how to get there. These are the kind of people who blow their nose into the sidewalk, who shuffle into oncoming traffic, and stare at grocery items that aren't there. So what hesitation would they have about sharing the magic sharpness with you? At least at night they're safely tucked away into their shelters, basements, cells and insane-o pods, dreaming of aliens and an endless supply of cigarettes.

* * * * *

Congratulations to Tony Burgess, winner of this year's ReLit award for short fiction. I had an outside hope for this, thinking all the stars had lined up in my favour, since there was no money attached to it, and they were having trouble finding a sponsor for the trophy (a ring), but hey. My friend Jenn Farrell was also on the shortlist, and her book was much more deserving than mine. It's called The Devil You Know, and you can buy it here.

* * * * *

Besides, getting notes like this are just as satisfying, especially when they magically appear under your studio door. Good reviews are fine, and sometimes even the faffle of chasing grants or the fromage that is writer's festivals (Q: "What were you thinking about when you wrote your book?" A: "Murder, mostly. Alien murder. And I was spending quite a bit of time dancing around in my grandma's panties. Woo. Wooo-ooo."). But I don't need black jeans, a motorcycle jacket and the tweaked applause of stuffy, middle-aged room to renew the faith. Just a note, from an actual reader, here and there. That's all.

wondering, cold water

2011-10-14T09:25:00.007-04:00

I wake Oona every morning with a bottle -- first I pick her up for a cuddle and then set her back in her crib propped against a pillow, and she waves me off and I say drink your bottle and then I go back downstairs to make my lunch.

But the last few days she's been doing this thing where she wants cold wa-der, cold wa-der run over the bottle -- because it's hot, hot -- cold wa-der, cold wa-der and I'm wondering where the fuck did this come from? and I find out C's been doing this thing where she either runs water over it for about three seconds or pretends to run water over it for about three seconds and then it's fine ... if there's one thing C loves to do is build up pathologies, yesterday it was the Smurfs on dvd but then she had to run out to the liquor store and Oona showed no interest in Papa Smurf or Hefty Smurf or not even Vanity Smurf so we just turned it off and went back to playing and roughhousing.

So I told Oona her bottle was fine and said drink your bottle, it's fine and turned to leave and she looked at me and then stood up and heaved the bottle over the side of the crib and it shattered over the carpet.

So that's the end of bottles.

While we're at it, we might as well try to break the sussy (pacifier) and two-baby-doll (two babies, two babies!) pathologies as well, because some day we will be in some situation where there is no pacifier (there is only one that will do right now) or baby dolls and that will be a very bad night. I had her sleeping free of both for a long time but then C worked hard to reverse that. With C it's always a combination of wouldn't-it-be-better-with-this? and it's-just-easier-with-that whereas I am a total dictator, killjoy and all-round bad person.

Tin-drum storm on the roof last night and the news warning about wind and rain so I came out three-layered and boots-heavy this morning only to find myself dying about halfway to work, just wet pavement and this watery-warm sun, the promised wind nothing but a breeze and me carrying bundles against the tow-coloured glare, wondering at a what a fool I am to listen to some weatherman.

Two guys who could be brothers if not identical twins sleeping in the front seats of an older model van on the street.

A giant can of Coffee-Mate sitting on curb. I'm sweating so much I walk right into it.

Sometimes I wonder if there is enough cold water in the world.

Well, there's always the sciences.

2011-10-12T13:16:00.002-04:00

thanksgiving my youth away

2011-10-11T08:16:00.006-04:00

Friday afternoon and out of work early. What could this mean but the library, Cambodiana for a late lunch and then the studio? The sun fairly shone over the garbage in the streets.

* * * * *

In fact the weather, all weekend, was startling -- like summer, only better. Not until late afternoon would a chill creep in, and even then it was only of the double-layer kind.

* * * * *

Saturday morning, grocery shopping. The store is pretty much empty. This is the optimum time to go, really, with only one drawback: there is a certain kind of mental defective who gets up early to go to Loblaws and buy two large bottles of pop with his gold Visa card, and he is not to be confused with the guy who likes to talk to himself about all the shopping baskets at the check out ("Baskets baskets baskets baskets BASKETS BASKETS ..."). Of course, I was in line with them both.

* * * * *

Later we (me, C and Oona -- not the deviants from the grocery store) walked down to the outdoor market. Foolishly, like some slow performing bear, I carried Oona on my shoulders. She thought it was funny to make hand prints on my glasses. After C spent almost as much money on market ginch as I did earlier on the week's groceries, we went out for lunch. Oona, as she always is in restaurants, was delightful. Meaning: ate nothing, threw all sorts of stuff on the floor, and proceeded to have a meltdown on the way out the door. I carried her home in my arms. I don't know if you've carried thirty pounds for a couple of kilometres lately, but it gives you the odd cramp. Luckily, we all got a nap that afternoon. Then we went to Winnie's birthday party. Winnie is three, and also delightful, but in a truer yet still Krusty-the-Clown/Machiavellian sense of that word. The lovely party was in her back yard, and the warm sun continued to beam around.

* * * * *

Talking about Alberta politics on his Sunday morning radio show, Michael Enright asked if that province was becoming more progressive. I almost spit up my coffee. Alberta is many things, but mostly divided along these lines: red-tory yuppies who live in the big cities and spend all their time talking about housing prices and what kind of private school to send their three year-old to, versus Jesus-lovin' rural conservatives who think Trudeau was the reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin, pray for Ottawa to spontaneously combust and who spend their weekends shooting foxes at close range and burying money in honey jars along the fence line.

* * * * *

So I turned the radio off, and spent the rest of the morning doing ink drawings to put in my Etsy shop. Christmas is bearing down on us all.

* * * * *

Because we are not from Sudbury, and our holidays are not marked by greenish liquors made in the basement, mysterious pregnancies and "them hot dogs with the cheese in 'em", we had a sit-down turkey dinner on Sunday (a day ahead of our 'official' Thanksgiving). C's friend Cara joined us. I did my best: stuffed turkey breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, baked butternut squash in brown sugar, peas, dinner rolls. Pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert. About an hour after dinner I realized that I forgot to warm up the peas. C said they tasted warm anyway, but that was just the wine talking.

* * * * *

Later on we watched Me and You and Everyone We Know. It's a movie with several intersecting story lines, but C's friend Cara especially enjoyed the one about "pooping back and forth, forever", which might explain why she's not married yet.

* * * * *

On Monday, because the weather was still gorgeous, we drove to Watertown so Oona could have a complete mental eclipse around the Perpetuball Motion Machine in the Salmon Run Mall and so C could drop the value of a small mortgage at Target. I bought some cheap shoes, because apparently there's more Americans walking around in the 14W's and 15's that I crave. God bless 'em.

I scream for artstream

2011-10-03T10:27:00.024-04:00

I drove down to Rochester, New Hampshire this weekend, where my friend Susan and I put on an exhibit called "O Canada, O New England" at her lovely gallery there -- artstream studios.

* * * * *

Canada -- a vast, dreamladen landscape ... full of sweet darkness, haunted psyches and femme fatales. While New England is famous for its loneliness, fishermen and Whoopie Pie. It's a fact!

* * * * *

The scene of the crime, taken early Saturday morning, before we'd even hung anything.

* * * * *

My half of the show was five very new pieces (which you can see in previous posts below or here), a good handful of ink drawings and then five older paintings which still fit my (arbitrary, fictitious) themes.

* * * * *

Like this painting, called The Whole Morning -- a wonderful painting whose story speaks to darkness, dreaming and being blue ... all at once! (FYI: the second photo was taken by Susan's husband, Rainer. Good perspective!)

* * * * *

And these -- I looked, Markov and poor girl -- these great paintings that fit with the show and needed a new lease on life after prospective buyers fell through (it happens all the time -- someone contacts me about wanting a painting, but then trying to arrange for payment or delivery is like trying to catch a cloud). So now they're in a nice gallery where people can easily access them, to purchase or just view. And this makes me happy.

* * * * *

Same goes for this fellow, fell for you.

* * * * *

Susan's figurative work always has this decorative, folk-art kind of quality -- very warm and comfortable. Not many paintings can go just about anywhere in a house, but these can. And her work is so affordable.

* * * * *

Speak of the devil.

* * * * *

And so we opened the doors and waited ... and waited ... and suddenly there was a crowd, all at once. Isn't that how it always goes? I remember throwing a party in university, and telling people to come for 9, and no one being there at 9:30, and proceeding to get drunk, and then being in no shape to host when everyone showed up at 10:30 (in fact, I had to 'designate' a host while I proceeded to become the kind of guest I'd tell to leave). (Note: the bottom photo is Rainer's again. It's in focus!).

* * * * *

We were part of Rochester's Art Walk that night. This is exactly the kind of thing that Susan does and organizes and promotes all the time, and it's this kind of generosity that explains why she'd invite a Canadian down to exhibit in her gallery, and why she's such a great host (and friend).

* * * * *

If you like any of the work you've seen here, please contact Susan at shop@artstreamstudios.com -- she's a professional! Her husband is German! He demands precision!

I See Darkness (Dear Darkness)

2011-09-29T08:47:00.006-04:00

I See Darkness (Dear Darkness); mixed media on cradled wood panel; 24 x 18 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame

* * * * *

Canadians love the darkness. It's a fact! Canadians spend more hours in darkness than any other people. "I prefer the darkness to anything else," says Tara Moon of Carbonville, Newfoundland. "Most nights I don't turn on a single light in my house." Over seventy percent of Canada's population lives in regions that enjoy at least twenty hours of darkness per day for eleven months of the year. In the so-called 'Stygian' regions of the northern Canadian prairies, people live in total darkness year-round. "People around here prefer their kids to be born in the dark," says Gillian Chee Chee from Pow Now, Saskatchewan. "The first thing we do is take them outside and throw them in the snow." Her neighbour, Wanda TwoLongFace, nods her head knowlingly. "It's the only way. In this town, people have to live their whole lives in the dark. I went to school in the dark, I attended college in the dark, I go to work in the dark, I even got married in the dark ... to tell you the truth, that way you get to imagine a more handsome guy." Many Canadians even see darkness as a form of recreation. Says Tara Moon: "To me, there's always been something compelling, sweet smelling and even mysterious about the darkness, like the site of an ancient campfire at the back of a cave. People think it's about not being able to see, but really it's about looking. I often have friends come over just so we can sit in the dark with a few litres of wine and compare the different qualities of nighttime, and the stories it's telling us."

* * * * *

This painting is part of the "O Canada, O New England" show I'm having this Saturday with my friend Susan at artstream studios in Rochester, New Hampshire.

Blue

2011-09-27T08:13:00.004-04:00

blue (blue); mixed media on cradled wood panel; 18 x 24 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame

* * * * *

Canadians are blue. It's a fact! "A higher percentage of Canadians are clinically depressed than any other population in the world," states Dr. Vera Grey of the Tristful Centre for Wayward Studies. She explains: "There are some key factors at play in Canada -- the ten-month winters, frequent lectures by the Queen, a national fondness for cough syrup, the popularity of Nina Simone, psychic vapours, etcetera -- that combine and reinforce each other to create a culture of bitterness and unhappiness." Glinda Moody of Chapfallen, Saskatchewan describes her own psychological makeup as typically Canadian. "Oh absolutely," she says. "I've hated everyone my entire life. Some days it takes all my strength not to hit the milk man with a broom handle, just because he said good morning to me. And if I see one more picture in the newspaper of Paul McCartney and that little smirk of his, by God I'm going to set this whole town on fire." Other Canadians embrace their weary and downhearted ways. Says Donna Grimshaw of the new mothers support group Melancholy Babies, "Look, everyone knows that things are never going to get better. The world is doomed. So lets have a drink or two or eleven and crank up the karaoke machine. We're all going to be dead soon anyway."

* * * * *

This painting is part of the "O Canada, O New England" show I'm having next Saturday with my friend Susan at artstream studios in Rochester, New Hampshire. I'll be posting more throughout this week.

I dream

2011-09-26T08:55:00.005-04:00

jeg drømmer (I dream); mixed media on cradled wood panel; 24 x 18 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame

* * * * *

Canadians are dreamers. It's a fact! Nine out of ten Canadians say they would rather dream than be awake. "Real life is a real disappointment," says Brook Farmer, a cattle rancher near Poopshead, Alberta. "I step out my door and what do I see? Cows. Do you know what the stupidest animals in the world are? Cows. So you could say that my entire existence is fenced in with stupidity. And cow shit. So yeah, I'd rather stay in bed." Miriam Castles of Arcadia, Nova Scotia would agree. "Oh heavens, I can't keep count the number of jobs I've lost because I didn't want to interrupt a good dream by getting out of bed," Miriam says. "And even when I do drag myself into work, I spend most of the day just flaking out and daydreaming. That usually gets me fired, too. Thank God for the dole." Scientists report that the dreaming urge is particularly strong in areas of Canada originally settled by Norwegian immigrants. "Their dreams are definitely superior in quality," explains Dr. Eli Dorado of the Xanadu Institute for Emerging Utopias. "I mean, even in their nightmares everyone is blonde and good-looking and at least six feet tall."

* * * * *

This painting is part of the "O Canada, O New England" show I'm having next Saturday with my friend Susan at artstream studios in Rochester, New Hampshire. I'll be posting more throughout this week.

what not to do when she is two

2011-09-24T19:29:00.006-04:00

Just back from the book launch for Uncommon Magic, the anthology of writing by members of our Ban Righ writers group, which is over thirty years old. I wish I had some pictures, but I didn't bring my camera. Yet I don't feel guilty either, because there's no way I'd have been able to take pictures anyway, since I had my hands full with Oona. Or rather: Oona being mental. Because if there's one thing you can count on a two year-old to do, it's to start acting loud/mental as soon as a room goes quiet to listen to a reading. So we spent our time in the hall. At the far end.

On the way home, I made a list of all the places/venues that Oona has been removed from for mental behaviour:

+ literary readings
+ restaurants
+ dinner parties
+ dinners
+ lunches
+ breakfasts
+ snacks
+ stores
+ malls
+ visits with friends
+ visits with non-friends
+ workplaces
+ waiting rooms
+ Christina

Still, the event went well. I think. Now we are home. Oona is in bed. I am drinking beer. That is all.

haunted

2011-09-23T13:41:00.005-04:00

Haunted; mixed media on cradled wood panel; 20 x 40 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame

* * * * *

Canadians are haunted. It's a fact! Canadians are visited by malevolent spirits more often than any other nation. "It's really not a surprise," reports Dr. Jonathan Howler of the Tuktuyaaqtuuq Institute for Talking Spectres. "Considering that three out of five residents admit to having committed one of the 'big three' Canadian crimes -- murder, manslaughter or fur trafficking -- then you have a lot of guilty, troubled people wandering around. Add to that all the aggrieved spirits -- all the homicide cases that go unsolved -- and you've got a virtual pandemic of ghosts." Dr. Howler's study, entitled Careless Whispers: the Casual Nature of Canadian Lust, Crime and Ghosts, reports that due to the changing nature of Canadian immigration patterns, while the oldest ghosts are almost all of British or French extraction, many of the newer ghosts are Asian in character. "Of course the Germans are still overrepresented," states Dr. Howler, "but they tend to have a lot more to answer for."

* * * * *

This painting is part of the "O Canada, O New England" show I'm having next Saturday with my friend Susan at artstream studios in Rochester, New Hampshire. I'll be posting more throughout next week.

red

2011-09-23T09:10:00.005-04:00

Red; mixed media on cradled wood panel; 20 x 40 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame.

* * * * *

Canadians love the colour red. It's a fact! Canadians wear more red than any other country. "I got married in red," says Ruby Fuller of Carmine, Manitoba. "I wear red every single day," Fuller states. "I've worn entirely red outfits to interviews, jury duty ... even funerals." Scientists have long studied why red is so appealing to Canadians. "It seems Canadians see red before any other colour," states Dr. Rufous Cardinal of the Munsell Institute. He states, "This might explain the Canadian penchant for violent sports like lacrosse and hockey -- oh, and all the rioting, too. Personally, I can get angry just looking at the flag." The femme fatale draped in red continues to be a powerful icon in the Canadian imagination. Says Rose Cassandra of Honeytruck, British Columbia: "I sexually manipulated a private detective *and* my husband into killing each other -- my husband poisoned the detective with arsenic-laced Chinese food and the detective, just before he died, shot my husband fourteen times -- so I could collect on a big fat insurance policy ... and the judge only gave me six months because he said I looked so lovely and not responsible in red."

* * * * *

This painting is part of the "O Canada, O New England" show I'm having next Saturday with my friend Susan at artstream studios in Rochester, New Hampshire. I'll be posting more throughout next week.

Uncommon Magic

2011-09-22T08:21:00.003-04:00

Uncommon Magic: 30 Years of Writing from the Ban Righ Writers Group; edited by Christina; Upstart Press.

* * * * *

C will be launching a book this weekend at the writer's festival -- it's called Uncommon Magic and it's a selection of writing from past and present members of the Ban Righ Writer's Group, which has been kicking around for thirty years now. I did the artwork and design. For free. And it wasn't easy (just try to imagine the trickiness of that title, and if when you close your eyes you see a manuscript being pulled out of a hat, or a glowing manuscript, or cascading stars, then you're halfway there). Still, it turned out pretty well. Plus, I chose as my own contribution a story so difficult and dark and crazy that I almost wept to see it in print. Take that, national archives!

Anyway, if you're around at all on Saturday, you should come on down to the Holiday Inn between 5:30 and 6:30. It's a free event. C will also be selling copies at the grad club at Queen's afterwards, until 9 pm. Or you can just buy her a drink. Which she likes. A *lot*.

call this number again and i'll kill you

2011-09-19T09:54:00.003-04:00

Detail from an August Blesser illustration.

* * * * *

I had to take a phone call last night. It was awful. This had nothing to do with the caller or the matter discussed, but had everything to do with the phone itself. Because it's a new phone. And, like all new phones, it feels like a cracker. I found myself shouting, and wanting to get away from the damn thing, because there was a line of magical ants crawling across my face.

C tried to explain to me how much better it was than the last phone, that it was 6.0-this and lightweight-that, but I didn't give a shit about any of it, because it doesn't feel like anything. It has no heft, no weight, no substantiality. It feels like a kid's play phone, that cheap cheap plastic feel.

A million years ago, on another planet, I had a black rotary phone. It weighed about thirty pounds. You could beat someone to death with the handset. It sat on a special shelf in the hall, with its own little alcove, and the chord wouldn't let you move it more than three or four feet. If it was a long call, you excused yourself while you went and got a chair.

I loved that phone. But everyone bitched about how hard it was to dial the numbers on the rotary. Boo hoo! Why did I ever listen to them? When I finally traded it in, the guy at the phone company laughed and threw it in a drawer.

What good is a phone if it's just this beeping thing that can follow you around? Phones don't have a sense of place anymore. They have no tether to significance. Which is why people make phone calls at the drop of a hat these days, and have nothing to say.

they are different than you and me

2011-09-14T08:55:00.003-04:00

cigar-tin story #123

* * * * *

The top one percent of Americans now make about twenty-five percent of that country's income. That same one percent now controls about forty percent of the country's wealth (meanwhile, one in six Americans now live below the poverty line).

But guess what? Canada is catching up! A Conference Board of Canada study came out the other day, and it kindly explained how income inequality has been rising more rapidly in Canada since the 1990's. Yay! Thirty-three percent of all the new wealth created in Canada over the past two decades has gone to the top one percent of the population! Capital!

* * * * *

I've also recently read that seventy-five percent of young Americans (17 to 24) are unsuitable for military service because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record or are physically unfit.

That could be our next goal!

Capital!

pride goeth

2011-09-12T15:14:00.002-04:00

I fell down some stairs on Friday. Actually, that's not very accurate, because I was going up at the time, and the falling was more forward and across -- I caught the top of my foot on a stair and then ... well, it became more of an aggravated stumble, I guess. And it was more embarrassing than anything else. All akimbo. And it usually wouldn't have amounted to much in the pain department, except the stairs were stone and I was wearing sandals. So I accomplished something just short of breaking my big toe, with lots of bruising and swelling to the front of my foot generally, and the last few days have been slow and awkward.

The other day I saw a guy fall out of a delivery truck. I was walking up Princess when I heard this awful sort of slapping crack right beside me, and I turned just in time to see him hit the pavement in a heap. And he was doing this terrible sort of quivering. I put down my bags and went over to him, but the guy he was working with (they were unloading boxes) was faster, so I just stood there for a minute while they figured it out. He got up and started walking around in limping little circles, and while I think he'll have some pretty good bruises, especially on his hip, he seemed okay. One of the few times I wished I had a cell phone.

My mom fell a few months ago. In the parking lot of a Dairy Queen, of all places. Broke things at the shoulder bad enough to have a bone poke through. It's more or less healed now, and she does her little exercises, but it's not quite the same either, and my older brother teases her about her weak, baby arm.

I knew a guy who fell off a ladder and had his eye pop out. I always wondered if he could see out of it, at the time, and what things looked like.

So the next time you fall, or stumble, or just having a bad day, you can say to yourself, "Well, at least my eye didn't pop out."

summer is over, i think

2011-09-08T13:08:00.005-04:00

summer is over; acrylic inks on math paper, 6.5 x 9.25 inches.

* * * * *

C was leaving early this morning for some Toastmaster's hoo-ha before work.

"So who would be a Toastmaster's idol? Who would be at the pinnacle of speech making?" I asked.

"Martin Luther King," C said.

"Yeah, he was pretty good," I said. "But so was Hitler."

* * * * *

Oona and I have little talks as we walk (well, I push and she rides) to daycare.

"Oona ... what colour is that house?"

"Blue!"

"That's right! And what colour is that house?"

"Blue!"

"No, yellow. What about that house?"

"Blue!"

"No, white. Okay, fine. But Oona ... what sound does an owl make?"

"Whhoooooo, whoooooo ..."

* * * * *

Soon afterwards, we saw a girl so skinny that she looked like a praying mantis wearing jeans. She didn't walk so much as awkwardly perambulate.

* * * * *

Oona hates it when I say, "I have a hypothesis!"

"No no no no," she'll say, shaking her head.

* * * * *

Is it just me, or does the Libyan thing seem to be getting news coverage waaaaay beyond its actual importance? Because the last time I looked, Libya was a desert with six million people and a crazy/bad guy that the world had been accommodating for forty years. I mean, I know it's fun for reporters to say "rebel alliance", but even Lockerbie didn't get this much press.

* * * * *

On Saturday morning, Oona and I are at the park. Also there is a middle-aged couple, a young family, and four other dads with their toddlers. When I got home I told C about it.

"Oh, they're giving mom a break," she said.

"Yeah, giving mom a break," I said, not looking up, because I was cleaning out the fridge, which I like to do before I go get the week's groceries.

* * * * *

And why was Sid Crosby the lead story on the national news last night? Was this just to give us a break from the Libya thing?

* * * * *

The CBC should not be televising performances by orchestras. That's boring and weird. It should be televising interesting things that have orchestral accompaniment. Show me a bear attacking a dinosaur or something.

* * * * *

My wife will never understand why I find the 'vigilante' mode of Grand Theft Auto so relaxing.

nine eleven

2011-09-07T11:50:00.001-04:00

There's a scary anniversary coming, and unless you've been floating in a pool of mercury, behind the walls of sealed cavern, within the bowels of an arctic mountain, screaming to yourself, as loud as you can, then you've already heard a lot of about it. A lot. And this is just the prelude.

Saddam Hussein would have called it the Mother of All Anniversaries. Then again, look where his talent for hyperbole got him.

It all reminds me of some sinister motion picture from the fifties, when black and white film was either overexposed or starless, just shades and shapes in shifting ashes, and everything cued by racing violins. Clouds boiling in the half darkness -- monstrous static-filled cumulonimbus, flickering with the shredded hearts of crumbled lightning, spitting leaden tears and electric venom in the shape of sharpened crosses.

America is always compelling, fascinating, the big man in the room. Only now we have the brooding colossus, still movie-star handsome and commanding, but slumped by the window of his crumbling fortress, seemingly under siege, staring out over a devastated landscape. Is it real or imagined? He sees the menacing smoke on the distant horizon but none of the fires in his own fields. There are masked men and peasants, bombs and scraps. Why do his thoughts seem so incoherent? He mumbles. He threatens the twilight, and then the rain. The rest of the world wonders -- is this a giant traumatized, a golem in the grips of a terrible dream, or has the light gone forever, and a certain madness descended? Is this anniversary about memory or a haunting?

Ten years, two wars, thousands murdered, tens of thousands killed, millions ruined, billions spent, a hapless cowboy, a hollow professor, bag men and crooks, hate-filled fanatics, lie machines and fear factories, the city on the hill surrounded by guard dogs, barking at the night. But everyone's still hoping for a happy ending, because as America goes, so does the weather, and all the lights that follow.

looking ahead

2011-09-01T12:28:00.000-04:00

Putting this drawing on Etsy today. I need to start filling my shop for Christmas. Have a good long weekend, everyone.

in my neighbourhood

2011-08-31T13:57:00.003-04:00

New York circa 1919. "Cripples at baseball." Victor Cassiere at left. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

* * * * *

York Street between Cherry and Carlisle is a funny, expressive little block. A few months ago, on our way to daycare, Oona and I came across a front door spray-painted with the words *UCK YOU in red capital letters (the asterisk is mine). Then, just yesterday, and a few doors down, on the street beside the sidewalk, someone had used white paint, a name and a giant arrow to suggest that the occupant of that house was a drug addict. Or DRUG ADDICT. Capital! On the way home, we saw that someone (else) had covered it up with blotchy brown paint. There's always lots of other colour on that street, in the way of shirtless guys falling off their bicycles or hipster-construction guys singing on guitar as they walk home from work or homeless guys who project the smell of something grey and dead and singed around the edges at least half a block ahead.

see them flinging out the banner

2011-08-29T11:43:00.013-04:00

Two highlights, lately ...

1} Having my book short-listed for the ReLit Awards (people like me don't win things like this, but it's nice to make the last heat) and

2} coming home from holidays (and no internet access) to see my essay Bike Chain in the new (online) issue of Knee-Jerk. I need a new author photo though ... in that one I look like I just woke up.

* * * * *

At the same time, I still get to trade in all sorts of grubby low notes, such as these with the editor of the Portland Review:

From: DJ Berger
To: Sarah Marshall

Hi Sarah,

Back in May 2010 I received the following ...

> From: "Editor, Portland Review"
> Date: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:26 pm
> Subject: Re: Your Submission to Portland Review

> Dear DJ Berger,
>
> We enjoyed and would like to include your piece "The Roof" in
> the upcoming issue of *Portland Review*. If it still available, please send
> an electronic copy in response to this email*, *along with a very short (100-
> word max) bio. We apologize for the excruciating wait, we've been spending
> too much of our time fighting budget cuts, etc.* *
>
> Attached is the letter we normally send back with the SASE. Feel
> free to sign it and send back a scan of it (or use e-signature).
>
yrs,
>
> Chris Cottrell
> Editor, Portland Review
> portlandreview.org
> theportlandreview.blogspot.com
> theportlandreview@gmail.com
> 503-725-4533
> PO BOX 347
> Portland, OR
> 97207-0347

I subsequently signed the contract, returned it, and sent along the story text and bio.

Then I heard nothing. For a year.

Would you please tell me if this story was published or not?

Thank you.

DJB

From: Sarah Marshall
To: DJ Berger

Hi DJ,

Please accept my apologies for this. The Portland Review is run on a more or less ridiculous system that gives it a new editor-in-chief every year or so, so the editor-in-chief who accepted your piece left his position immediately afterwards. It was then taken over by Jackie Treiber, and I just took over five days ago. I'm currently in the process of figuring out all these niggling little remainders left over by my predecessors, so I'm glad you contacted me about this. (In the future, however, I'd prefer it if you send an email to the portland review gmail account, since unlike my predecessors I plan on actually answering all the emails I receive.) Please send your piece to us and I'll take a look at it as soon as possible, and get back to you within the week.

Sarah

From: DJ Berger
To: Sarah Marshall
Date: Tuesday, 21/06/2011

Hi Sarah,

I understand. I just need to know ... something. Especially since it's been accepted by your magazine once already.

I'm attaching the same piece, called 'The Roof', as a pdf.

The accompanying illustration is my own.

Thanks for addressing this.

DJB

and then ... silencio. No word. That one week turning into ten.

So, to recap: I submitted a story, it was accepted, I fulfilled all further requests (digital text, bio, contract, etc), but it was never printed (to my knowledge), and I was never told why, so I asked about it, and I was given assurances, and those assurances turned out to be crap.

And I'm done fucking around. I mean, come on. I understand that publishing is a tough racket and writers have all the bargaining power (and sympathy) of Christians in the Colosseum but ... come on. We had a fucking contract. After that there's only one question: either you exist or you don't.

intruded

2011-08-25T10:09:00.004-04:00

I don't why I fell so easily into this strange little game. The surveillance-camera conceit was part of it. And having recourse to nothing but arrow keys was something, too. And the music is good. But really it's just this staticky, disquieting packet of a thing, like some surrealist short story.

And it's free.

less than a feeling

2011-08-22T10:35:00.059-04:00

We go on vacation from August 3rd to August 22nd. To my wife's cottage on the Northumberland Strait (you can see the bridge to PEI in the distance). I keep a little notebook, as I usually do. The inscription on the inside front cover reads

A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
-- George Moore

This is, of course, exactly the kind of bullshit they put in little notebooks.

* * * * *

We leave Kingston on a Wednesday morning. As I haul the last few things to the car, the back yard is a gauntlet of hot hammers, a vortexing heat sink. As it's been for weeks now. It's also been like this *every* time we've left on vacation.

* * * * *

Another thing that happens to us every summer vacation? We cross the border into Quebec and the world becomes some kind of Kurosawa void, this land of ghosts and fog. Air like sprayed bleach. I kept expecting the blonde cop from Silent Hill to pull us over.

* * * * *

Someday, Liver & Onions will disappear from truck stop menus, because that generation will be gone.

* * * * *

C is clever enough to book a hotel with an indoor pool. Later, while the girls sleep, I stay up drinking raspberry vodka, watching this kid win his poker triple crown.

* * * * *

I can never sleep in hotels.

* * * * *

A million trees. At least. Up and down the same hill, over and over again, every valley with a little bridge at the bottom. Double lane, single lane, view -- over there, slow down for construction, right lane ending soon ... driving through New Brunswick can be like having someone pour cough syrup over your brain stem.

* * * * *

Then getting warmer, this hesitant sun poking around.

* * * * *

Someday there will be no churches left in this country.

* * * * *

Two days of driving. I think we will never get there but we get there. And there it is: the cottage. Needing things.

* * * * *

First morning at the cottage. I haven't gone into Amherst to do the wallet-emptying, three-trips-to-the-car's worth of shopping yet so toast is about all that's on offer.

* * * * *

What is a cottage but a smaller version of a house, with less amenities? Oh yes, there's the ocean.

* * * * *

The only people who swim at the shore are the tourists.

* * * * *

Rhythms all out of whack; these stutter steps to get through the day.

* * * * *

There's something off-putting about People magazine first thing in the morning.

* * * * *

Some people can get away with bathing in the sun.

* * * * *

Gray and Mel. An outdoor wedding, on the grounds of their farm. Everything very nicely done up. They also had lovely weather and the whole thing came off in the warmest, easiest kind of way.

Half of our wedding present to them. They wouldn't take Oona as the other half. "Poops too much," they said.

* * * * *

So we get two nice days. Auntie Catherine is here for a fly-in visit, just for Gray and Mel's wedding, just to make sure I made the ten pounds of potato salad that she signed up for, just to spank the hell out of Oona (O God she loves that), then leave. After that the weather goes sideways. Oh, certainly, one can sit comfortably in one's Ontario home and watch the meteorologist's national weather report, and it's all fine and good to see these cartoony little rain clouds dance dementedly around the Maritimes, but you don't *really* understand it until you make the two-day trip to see it for yourself. Yep, there it is: as bleak and tear-soaked as Thulsa Doom's heart.

* * * * *

One thing about rain is that you get to spend whole mind-collapsing blocks of time building fires.

* * * * *

At least the roof doesn't leak.

* * * * *

Strangely, I can write with people around, but I don't feel comfortable drawing.

So I get up early, before everyone else, to paint a t-shirt for a certain somebody.

* * * * *

Oona is nearly two. They say two year-olds are exhausting. So I guess Oona is nearly exhausting.

* * * * *

Day 6: steady rain. Late morning, we all go for a long walk on the sand bars anyway. We all get wet. After lunch, and building yet another fire, and after Oona goes down for her nap, I try for a siesta of my own. The rain patters on the roof. Two things happen while I lie dozing: C (impatiently, compulsively) stuffs enough wood into the fire to temporarily turn the inside of the cottage into Mexico (which then forced her to frantically throw open every door and window in the place) and, not only does Oona refuse to stick to her nap, but she decides to take off all her clothes, including her poopy diaper. She then smears the poop all over her arms and chest. Fun! Have you ever seen that poster of the baby eating spaghetti? Well, imagine that, only with poop instead of spaghetti. One second I'm sleeping, the next I'm waking up in a full sweat, listening to my wife try to clean Oona with wet wipes. Not effective! I sweep her up into bathroom, where she gets to experience her first shower (Oona, not C). At arm's length! Fun! I haven't scraped that much (wet) poop off a (wet) human being since I worked as an aide at a psychiatric hospital. Memories! Fun!

* * * * *

That night we watch Dark Water on C's laptop. Only now do I see how ironic that title is. Anyway, why are all Japanese horror films about little girls?

* * * * *

Day 7: Wind, rolling waves, white caps. Blow blow blow. I'm up at 6:15 and think I might draw but then C gets up so I have to build a fire and tell her not to touch it.

* * * * *

We have a little washer-spinner -- a giveaway from the neighbour's -- and C wants to do two loads. This means that Oona and I have to flee the premises. Immediately. Because any kind of housework makes C extremely angry. And it's best not to be around that particular grenade when you hear the pin pulled.

* * * * *

So Oona and I take a long walk. We mail a postcard. We poke around an abandoned house. New Brunswick is full of abandoned/haunted houses, and reminds me of Saskatchewan that way. Then we play in the puddles in the back lane. What a crazy vacation!

* * * * *

Day 8: Darkness, gloom. We all struggle with consciousness -- especially Oona, who seems to want to sleep big people's hours. So we go to the Moncton Zoo. Actually, it's a perfect day for it: cool with light mist. Of all the animals, the one I enjoy the most -- if I can use that term here -- is the Marabou Stork. It looks like a burn victim who's been handed a stolen coat. C's dad Graeme is with us, and he calls the Marabou ugly, but I'd rather say it's just been viciously misinformed about what's in style.

* * * * *

Day 9 we go to Sackville. Oona runs riot over the bone yard.

* * * * *

Haunted much?

* * * * *

Day 10: I haul the dead, rusted barbecue behind the tool shed in the back, where it will become part of the permanent architecture of the shore.

The tool shed doors are coming off their hinges again, so I sink deeper screws into the soft, decaying wood. Otherwise the structure is in reasonably good shape, leaning- and rotting-wise, the industrial-level exterior paint I slapped on two years ago having shocked the thing into some kind of temporary stability.

Mowing the lawn is certainly fun, in an OCD kind of way; the machine is about as wide as an electric shaver, so you have to go up and down the same lines over and over again. And you *still* miss spots.

C's family visits. I'm right in the middle of making burgers and sausages on the stove when the new barbecue is delivered. Perfect! At the same time, the teenagers move all the buns, salad, etc off the dining table so they can play Monopoly. More perfect!

Later, after they leave, and I finish all the washing up, I end another day by making yet another big batch of potato salad. And then I do the dishes from that.

* * * * *

One thing about all the wind is that it's blown away all the mosquitoes. For now.

* * * * *

Is it pleasant to float in the Atlantic, unmolested by jellyfish, not hunted by horseflies, watching clouds sit like the memory of exploded pillows in the sky? Of course it is.

* * * * *

I get a newspaper. The American economy is sliding into some kind of Japanese-style stagnation. No one believes in anything, no one is buying. Having 15% of your population on food stamps can't help.

* * * * *

C and I have a discussion about the cottage. I have to remind her that it's really "her thing" -- she's the one who spent her childhood summers here, all the people from the shore are people from her past, they're her friends, and all the work we do and errands we run and money we spend on the cottage -- not just while we're down here but year-round -- is really in service to that idea. "But I'd like it to become *our* thing," she says. This is a lovely sentiment but it belongs on a greeting card. I remind her what her eventual reaction would be to spending all our holidays -- every year -- visiting my family in Saskatchewan. Or going camping. This pretty much ends the discussion.

* * * * *

Later she admits that she feels like she has to come to the cottage every summer to make sure it doesn't fall apart.

* * * * *

And yes, of course, it has all sorts of significance beyond that, and she certainly enjoys it, at some point during every holiday, on a meaningful level.

* * * * *

I have my own point/epiphany when I do some math and figure out how much each swim in the Atlantic is costing me. Then I stop.

* * * * *

Day 11 at the cottage and I get up early -- company's coming and not only do I desperately need a shower (I smell like a towel that's been left in the bottom of a gym bag) but this might be my last chance to do any kind of work for awhile.

Is the sun nice on Day 11, as it rises and breaks across the ocean's surface, and fills the cottage with radiant gold light? Absolutely. I find it's also quite nice on my walk to work.

* * * * *

Anyway: Oona and I have the rest of the morning together while C goes off to buy a window in Port Elgin (a lovely place to get stabbed with a broken beer bottle, if you're ever interested). "I won't spend any more than $500 on a window," she promises. Capital!

* * * * *

We have a nice overnight visit from E and J and DJ. It's pretty relaxed, the kids get along and the weather, mercifully, holds its breath. We get outside. We drink beer. We complain about our jobs. Plus they're Irish so they're full of long-ish stories.

* * * * *

We need new chairs; our deck chairs are (a) falling apart, (b) temporary or (c) embarrassingly cheap.

* * * * *

And then I think maybe that's the cottage is, for most people: their one big, yearly exposure to being outside. C said something like that yesterday -- that she just wanted to sit on the deck and get lots of sun, get some colour in her legs, and be heated right through. I know that in the past, when I drove to work, there were many days that I was hardly outside at all. Are cottage holidays just a form of repackaging, a way to elevate and consume the idea of being 'outdoors'?

* * * * *

The fly swatter is a very efficient killing machine.

* * * * *

Early Sunday evening and I'm out of sorts: tired in a vague, diffused way. I'd like to read but C is intent on watching some truly shit television.

"I can't believe you're watching something with a laugh track," I say.

"That's the girl from Blossom," she says. "Do you recognize her?"

"Do you recognize that what you've just said further invalidates your viewing choice?" I ask.

The laugh-track bullshit is followed by some network bullshit starring Martha Plimpton and the guy who played the Hearst agent (and prostitute murderer) in Deadwood. I have no idea what it is but ... Martha Plimpton! Wow. Maybe Amanda Plummer will get her own show soon, too.

* * * * *

Day 13: gloom but not that cold. C has it in her head to paint two dressers, and once she has that idea in her head ... Oona and I go to the beach. It's windy and depressing but we have a boat.

* * * * *

One toy: I am an advocate of the One-Toy Theory, that one toy is infinitely superior to being offered infinite toys. C, on the other hand, believes in the Magic-Bullet Theory: that if you just keep offering enough choices, you will find that choice that makes the child happy. We argue about this quite a lot. Of course Oona sides with mom, because it's fun to be offered twelve things in the space of five minutes, and I get called "Bad Daddy".

* * * * *

That night, C insists on watching more television, so I insist on watching Bridget Jones's Diary. This bugs C to no end. "Ugh, this is awful," she says, going off to bed. I wait five minutes for the snoring to start, then turn off the television to eat ice-cream and write.

* * * * *

Frozen cappucino yoghurt is about as effective as low-calorie beer.

* * * * *

C says it's impossible for a man over the age of forty to keep his looks. "Even Magnum couldn't do it," she says. "Then why do I even bother dressing in anything except sweats and baseball caps?" I ask. "I don't know, why do you?" she asks back.

* * * * *

I feed the neighbour's dog a few times. Now he stalks me. Who knew you could buy undying love with a handful of barbecued Spam?

* * * * *

I read two books, and then halfway through an uncorrected proof about a charming, not-so-charming fox. Parallel ways running into each other. And I think I'm holding back on that one, doing more imagining than reading.

* * * * *

Murder City
Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields
by Charles Bowden

Not a light romp. Not a heartwarming coming-of-age story. Not a breathless historical romance about a forty-something woman suddenly empowered by her divorce, a road trip and an imagined romance with the last Beothuk Indian.

This is a story about a city at the end of light. Where light has no meaning. Where no one tries to see anything, or understand anything. Where answers have the same meaning as magic.

Thousands of people are being murdered in Juarez, Mexico. No one knows how many for sure; all statistics are guesses. This is because, for every person dumped on the street, there are many more disappeared into the desert. Or beneath murder houses. Journalists who investigate such things get killed. The killings are done by the gangs. And the drug cartels. And the police. And the army. There is really no difference between any of these groups and they are all killing people for the same reason: the drug business. The drug business is the biggest thing going, which isn't difficult when up against the hand-to-mouth existence of the NAFTA-powered factories. Juarez is one of those dystopian alternative universes where all the honest people live in grinding hardship and all the bad people live like kings and there is no government and no truth and no future.

There are a few ground rules. If you say, the killings make you sad, well, you will be killed -- a bullet right into your head. If you say, it is terrible how people live in Juarez, how the poverty is awful, well, you will be killed -- a bullet right into your head. If you say, it is all caused by American imperialism, you will be killed -- a bullet right into your head. If you say, it is really an issue of femicide, you will be killed -- a bullet right into your head. If you say, it all the result of NAFTA, you will be killed -- a bullet right into your head. If you blame American drug consumers, you will be killed -- a bullet right into your head. If you say, it all because of a war between cartels, you will be killed -- a bullet right into your head.

The book is bleak and mesmerizing. It reminds you how wrong things can go, how hope can disappear from whole societies, how close madness waits at the borders.

* * * * *

Jonathan Livingston Seagull
by Richard Bach

I read this as a sort of palate cleanser after Bowden's Murder City. It's the story of a seagull who wants to test the limits of flight. For this he is exiled by the Flock. He spends the rest of his days alone but also in a state of joyous learning, flying his little heart out, but saddened that he cannot share his knowledge with others. Then, in a sort of heaven (in that heaven is only a state of seeking perfection), he learns even more from seagulls like himself, seagulls who use flight as a transformative learning experience. Finally, he returns to earth and, eventually, the Flock, in an effort to liberate the minds of his fellow seagulls, to show them that life should have no limits.

A lot of new-age, Buddhist hoo-ha here but still a charming little book. Plus it only takes about ten minutes to read.

* * * * *

Day 14. It has rained over night. Everything sits sodden on the deck, in the grass. A soft fog covers the ocean. C says it will burn off. We'll see.

* * * * *

We are out walking on the sand bars at sunset. Not talking much, just walking and feeling the evening cool set in. I have Oona on my shoulders and she's methodically touching all the parts of my face. "I was looking in my journal the other day," I say to C, "and I saw that it was the fifteenth anniversary of starting my job." C looked back at me. She could have said anything at that point. She could have started a conversation about how fast time goes, or about careers, or about pensions. She could have just said, "Oh, that's nice." But instead she said, "What do you want, a fucking cake?"

* * * * *

Later on we play cards. Rummy. I hate her rules for Rummy, specifically the one about not being able to pick up something from the pile unless you can immediately lay it down. It takes away from the element of surprise. I like to burn my opponents, to catch them with a mittful of cards. Whereas C just goes for points. Despite this, I build up an early lead. She tells me to shut up and deal. Then, three glasses of wine in, she hits her stride, and makes a comeback. "God it must be hard to be such a loser," she says. When I ultimately win the game, she calls me a bad winner.

* * * * *

C always says I am a difficult person. She's probably right. I'm definitely not a team player. I also like to draw cartoons of cats being led up the gallows.

* * * * *

Day 15. Wind and rain. The cold isn't bad but I make a fire anyway. You can play this at Christmas, if you want.

* * * * *

The rest of the day isn't bad, either. I actually get some drawing done. And after breakfast C takes Oona to the hardware store at Cap Pele, so daddy gets a break. Of course, he uses most of it to clean the cottage, but it's still something. Then Oona has a long nap in the afternoon, I get a shower, the rain continues to fall, and things pass into a quiet evening rather effortlessly. The fire snips and snaps away. And sometimes cottage rainy days are the best days.

* * * * *

Is all children's programming computer-generated animations now? All the characters are fantasy creatures, there is some chickenshit mystery to solve, some act-along physical activity, and then a whole whack of celebration and self-congratulation at the end. Once Oona turns two, I'm going to have her watching nothing but Law & Order re-runs.

* * * * *

Last few days and I lose the thread: no more notes. There's chores to do, getting the cottage ready for renters. People visit (Gray and Mel, bringing beer and sausage and salad but steadfastly refusing to listen to anything but Def Leppard) or we visit them (C's Aunt Jane, still scandalously short but making a mean lunch), the drive home seems longer than the drive there, in fact it feels like someone has taken my guts out in two handfuls and given them a good squeeze, while my brain is a carcass fished from a polluted river, and I wonder why the people of Quebec love Elvis so much, or why the radio station from Maine is advertising a handgun giveaway, or if hell is the bathroom at certain Irving rest stops, and all the while Oona is actually a dream in the car, no crying or complaining, just endless jibberish to her 'babies', still, the last hour on the highway is one of the longest of my life, the radio is Casey Kasem torture, and C hates Bruce Springsteen, and I arrive home completely exhausted, the office the next day freezing, looking shabby, I have 142 work emails and 158 personal, none of it is important, my neck hurts, the end.

* * * * *

All two year-olds are miniature, maniacal gangsters. Full stop.

going

2011-08-02T14:31:00.006-04:00

A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton

Install a patient writer -- worse, a talented philosopher -- in Terminal 5, the brainy jewel of Heathrow airport, as 'writer-in-residence' for a week and this is what happens: a hundred-pages-or-so meditation on travel, industry, humanity and art. The author glamorizes nothing -- in fact, he is engagingly blunt about the disappointment that necessarily undermines *all* vacations, in that we're forced to bring ourselves along -- while finding charm and poetry in the details, such as the hotel menu

Delicate field greens with sun-dried cranberries,
Poached pears, Gorgonzola cheese
And candied walnuts in a Zinfandel vinaigrette

or the melancholy calm of the terminal at night, or the lonely stillness of an unused runway. An amusing, thoughtful book -- easy to read but queuing with big ideas.

* * * * *

This is an illo I did for my story in the Ban Righ book C and I are putting together. It (my story) is all about travel, too.

* * * * *

And with that I'm taking my summer break. Thanks to Bev Akerman for letting me know I was on the ReLit Awards long list, and best of luck to her (and Jenn).

same as it ever was

2011-07-29T10:05:00.003-04:00

A 2010 Lego ad, still building on the '80's.

* * * * *

Staff bbq + fun day yesterday so of course I took a personal day. C and I had lunch, went shopping. I mostly cruised the discount stuff, which can make you a little dizzy (all that failure + cheap plastic).

Seeing what the kids are wearing these days, it got us talking about a few of the things that were verboten when I was in university ...

+ riding a bike (reaction: are you retarded?)
+ shaggy beards (reaction: so, which is it -- are you a hippie, drug dealer or just homeless?)
+ headbands (reaction: seventies/hippie/loser)
+ toques (reaction: nice lid)
+ large dogs (reaction: I can barely feed myself; who the fuck can afford a dog?)
+ smokes (reaction: do you have any?)
+ sandals (reaction: I've obviously stumbled into some kind of hippie matrix here)
+ wire-rimmed sunglasses (reaction: ew, sleazy)
+ backpacks (reaction: seriously, are you retarded?)

C seems to think that people generally look worse these days but I'm not so sure. They seem heavier, certainly. But we were only thinner because we smoked too much and considered beer a meal.

* * * * *

This will be my last post for awhile as I take a break for vacation. Take care, kids.

on drowning

2011-07-25T08:26:00.004-04:00

On Thursday, after work, I left an office made up mostly of cool, air-conditioned, half-informed darkness and stepped into the full, lobotomized effulgence of the hottest day of the year. It was not bad for the first half-mile or so. Then it was atrocious. Have you ever walked into a busy kitchen in the middle of a blazing summer afternoon? The cooks all have that red-busy-burning look, that punished, automatic-moving thing going on. It was like someone grabbed me by the hair and forced me to stare at what was in the oven. Look at the little lamb! Look at what you make me do! I thought I was smart to go hopscotching from one super-cooled premises to the next (Staples, Indigo, art supply store, grocery), my eyes buggy from relief each time, but I leaked whole bullets of DNA all the same. O god it was awful. I saw people in jeans and thought, You are going to die ... and you're *still* going to look fat. This wasn't summer. This was a message. It went: Insects! People scurried or wilted. I even heard a busker singing, Livin' on a Prayer. Jesus Christ!

* * * * *

Days later, C and I went to go see The Drowning Girls: three bathtubs, three showers, three buckets, three policeman's helmets, three bouquets, three soaking newspapers, three teacups, three wedding rings, three pairs of hosiery, three wedding dresses, three drowned girls. Or ladies, rather. All victims of a serial seducer, a serial killer. All three with the same murdered voice, yet each one with its own life. Very stark, and wet (in the front row, I got splashed) and sad, and often funny. All the actors were quite good, although C and I agreed that Taylor Trowbridge was a standout.

* * * * *

Amy Winehouse died this weekend, only twenty-seven. A fit from drinking. Sad.

* * * * *

In 1970, two percent of the population considered multiple telephones a necessity. In the year 2000, it was 78 percent -- and I doubt many people were still calling them "telephones".

Well, *I* still call it the telephone, and I *hate* talking on it. About the only calls I make are to my mom, the bank, the dentist and Oona's daycare.

I'm trying to write letters to people again, or at least send out cards (my accordion story cards are good for that, because the story does most of the work). I don't know -- it seems more serious, more polite, more thoughtful. This might come as a surprise to people on Facebook, where I exist like one of the heckling old men from the Muppet Show, but I do have other gears.

* * * * *

The other night, as she refused to eat dinner, sitting slumped in her highchair with her head in her hands, droning away like some grieving medieval peasant, I heard myself telling Oona: Listen, when you're drowning in misery like this, and you make it cartoonish, I can't help but laugh. If you want some real sympathy, try dialling it back a bit.

tangerine dreaming

2011-07-20T14:30:00.005-04:00

cigar-tin story #120, now in my shop

* * * * *

We watched The King's Speech the other night. It was terrifically well done. Yes, fine and fine. All very sweeping and noble. Helena Bonham Carter even managed to look rather sane. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to muster the required amount of giving-a-shit about a stuttering king who, in real life, managed to underline his irrelevance by championing the appeasement artists of the time (please stand up, Neville Chamberlain). How wonderfully inspiring, too, that the climactic 'speech' of the movie is about Great Britain's declaration of war against Germany -- for invading Poland. Because, you know, the Soviet Union *also* invaded Poland. Two weeks later. No speech on that one. No speech either when the Soviets came back at the end of the war. So I guess it really wasn't about Poland after all. What a crazy war!

Also: there was no Tangerine Dream on the soundtrack.

the rules for summer

2011-07-18T08:11:00.005-04:00

Not exactly rules per se but we've fallen into a certain kind of weekend routine, one predicated on a simple idea:

avoid bursting into flame.

The sun isn't the enemy -- not exactly -- but C and I are both old enough to treat the dragging afternoon apocalypse with a certain amount of respect and distaste. The irradiated skin, the inside-out boiling, the wobbling and then collapse of one's central nervous system ... all of these things are better left to the kind of people who go shirtless for a (non)living, and can smoke while holding three babies.

So we do our business in the morning. On Saturday it's the park, where the theme for Oona is always the same: Run, please. And she does, mostly from slide to swing to climbing structure to bench to interesting stick to excitable dog to other children, all the time pointing at everything like a traffic cop or a tour guide. Then we go for a winding walk home, hit a yard sale or two, have some lunch, and then a long afternoon nap. On Sundays I go to the studio. I'm there by seven, with a list of things to do and the energy of someone with more plans than talent or time. Right now, at the height of summer, I can usually stay 'til noon-ish before things get too warm, my eyes get too bleary and I need some lunch. If Oona *doesn't* sleep on Sunday afternoon, we'll go swimming -- indoors, at the gym we belong to -- and I'll ask many pointed questions about where all that Oona-energy has gone to when she *doesn't* want to kick or float or even be in the kiddie end.

p.s. And then, finally, a big walloping thunderstorm this morning, even as I drank my coffee and typed this, which ended with me sitting in the dark (the computer has its own battery, mom).

it's here, I can feel it

2011-07-14T10:42:00.007-04:00

That threshold, that point of tipping over -- every summer I say I won't, and then it happens anyway, whereupon I lose all thread of ambition, and any capacity for work. I try to keep some spare thought around, just in case I get inspired (I won't), but even that is heat-addled and lazy.

July has been too hot, too humid, too unrelenting so far. Every day with your face to the open furnace. When every list starts to include 'hat' and 'sunscreen', you know the program has turned oppressive. I go around following thinned alleys of shade. Is this what it's like, to live in Nevada?

For a pedestrian, there are only three kinds of drivers ...

• bad drivers
• bad drivers on cell phones (the attention-deficit equivalent of farting while reciting poetry)
• bad drivers on their way to the mental hospital, having just been told (by cell phone) that their test results came back 'Angry/Retarded'

Yesterday, while walking Oona home from daycare, an elderly couple (British, diminished) with a little girl in the back seat stopped their car at the corner to ask me directions to the new water park. Directly behind them were a pair of kids (anywhere between 13 to 25, I can't tell anymore) on a motorcycle.

GIRL: Holy fuck just go around them already they don't even use their fucking blinkers they're a million fucking years old.
BOY: Holy fuck just shut the fuck up already.

I apologized to the fearsomely stunned old folks and proceeded to give them the wrong directions.

Really, there are only three avenues of relief for the hottest afternoons

• the liquor store -- always super-cooled in there ... plus they have free samples!
• the library ... the air-conditioning is only mid-range but the soiled seats are extra comfy ... plus they have free books!
• reading lost-cat posters ... this is more a personal one.

Still, the last two days have seen some rain and breeze, the mornings fresh and lively and some people even showing up on time, and all play-acting at work-acting can be safely tucked in by eleven. But after lunch it's useless.

* * * * *

All these cigar-tin stories (there are ten, altogether) done as a custom order for a collector, bless her red heart.

G H O S T

2011-07-11T08:42:00.003-04:00

Received my copy of GHOST from the Toronto artist Rebecca Cairns the other day -- a dark little exercise in movement and memory and blank-ceilinged spaces, and another wonderful example of creatives acting for themselves (it's a blurb book). I hope she has great luck with it.

* * * * *

O God are the royals gone yet? Because I don't know if I can bear another pants-peeing sound bite like, Oh, they were SO NICE! And she's SO GORGEOUS! And she said she liked MY DRESS! Really, they were nice? As opposed to what -- spitting blood at people? Telling the crowd that they looked like ants? I mean, have we had other royal visits where they've flown over to scream obscenities and shake gloved fists down at us from the balcony? Have they gone around hitting people with champagne bottles? Because *that* is a tour I would be interested in.

nauseated

2011-07-07T08:23:00.005-04:00

owly; acrylic inks on Cartiera Favini Letraset paper.

* * * * *

(I would prefer to say 'nauseous' but then C would nearly pee herself trying to correct me fast enough. But 'nauseous' just sounds closer to how it feels, doesn't it?)

Anyway: slightly owly and nauseated today and *very* nauseated last night (was supposed to get groceries -- instead I couldn't get off the couch), bouts of nausea occurring over the last three days, usually in the late afternoon and then dissipating by early evening, except for last night which was awful. I could hear C in the next room, watching Coronation Street and getting drunk.

Actually, she had the same thing on the weekend. So what the hell?

Yesterday on the way home from work there was a certain point where I just had to stop walking and stand there, my mouth filling with spit and the urge to vomit all over the sidewalk.

It reminds of the headaches I had all in a cluster back at the end of May: about ten days of brain pins and nausea arriving in tides, here and there. And then disappearing for good.

My advice? Don't ever get old.

found this in my shirt pocket today ...

2011-07-06T09:11:00.001-04:00

... I hate being taunted by the Chinese.

whatsits

2011-07-05T13:46:00.004-04:00

Have you ever noticed how people will talk at length about happiness and dreams and goals but hardly anyone ever talks about reasonable goals, about life in realistic terms, because to do so is somehow seen as downbeat or pessimistic or defeatist? What's more, we never talk about how rewards often just fall from the sky, just happen to people, because they're pursuing a certain line of thought or activity and experience a certain amount of luck, as opposed to them actively chasing the recognition for that activity?

I just read a little interview with Michael Spence, who was asked if he had any advice on how to win a Nobel Prize ...

There’s no way to win it in the active sense; you sort of end up receiving it if you’re lucky. It’s not a reasonable goal in life.

... and I was struck by how odd this sounded. No "reach for the stars" or "dream big" or any of that bullshit.

He also talks about our ideas around happiness. This is a subject I often discuss with my wife. We discuss it because my wife is the kind of person who is never happy. She *thinks* she will be happy, when she gets that next whatsit (car, couch, computer, house, certificate, toy, sushi tray, etc), but it doesn't last. And then starts the race to the next whatsit.

She would be the first to admit that she just wants what she wants, and that she doesn't give a shit about the journey, about process. She would also be the first to tell me to shut my hole about reasonable goals.

And hey: she does get a *lot* done. But then, so do I. And I do my stuff so much more quietly.

meaningless

2011-07-04T13:03:00.005-04:00

Speculative poster design by Chris Thornley.

* * * * *

We watched Mean Streets the other night. No: had never seen it. Do not be surprised. There are all sorts of omissions like this, when one grows up in the middle of a prairie nowhere, with three channels (one in French) and no idea.

Anyway: I enjoyed it, in that sense of seeing a kind of cultural artifact, the fountainhead of all that dirty glamour that was to come. Really, the weight of thing is no more than a short story, and went on a bit too long, but so what.

Unfortunately, we then misplaced our trust in the TVO feature and watched the 1997 romantic comedy In & Out. Kevin Kline, Tom Selleck (sans moustache), Matt Dillon, Debbie Reynolds, Wilford Brimley, Bob Newhart, Lauren Ambrose ... what a shallow, trivial mess. About as funny as wet wedding cake. And yet: a commercial success!

C says this kind of movie reflects a certain appetite, that there's a sizable population out there that just wants ephemeral fluff, and nothing deeper. Okay, fine. But there's also an audience for Leni Riefenstahl flicks, and that doesn't make them right either.

Are you going to stay up to watch Personal Best? C asked me.

No, I said. Those chicks are too skinny for me.

more Oona art

2011-06-30T10:08:00.003-04:00

Why am I not referred to by name here? Why am I only "Oona's Daddy"? I AM NOT A NUMBER. I AM A PERSON.

These are the kinds of pictures we are going to get whenever mommy attempts to cook.

High. Obviously: high. I do not understand. Where is she getting the drugs from? She's not even two!

Canada Day

2011-06-29T09:01:00.002-04:00

True story.

w i n n e r s

2011-06-27T08:25:00.003-04:00

And the first name for the draw is ...

... oh no, wait, that's the Christmas draw. Sorry. Okay the real winners of the draw are ...

... and ...

So ... yeah. Thank you to all who entered! Including those on Facebook, I had about 25 people. For the winners: the mail is *supposed* to start working again today but I probably won't brave the lines until tomorrow.

G I V E A W A Y

2011-06-23T11:54:00.010-04:00

I'm having a wee giveaway: a set (4) of transparent seasonal mini-calendars and a set (4) of accordion story cards. Leave a comment below and I'll make the draw for each over the weekend (Sunday), then chase down the winners.

The transparent seasonal mini-calendars are see-through film strips that you can stick on a fridge or magnet board.

• 2.5 inches wide by 10.25 inches high
• printed on clear transparency film, gloss side
• pack of four: spring, summer, winter and fall
• each with artwork
• works well as a fridge calendar (with magnet), bookmark, on a magnet board
• comes in a durable card stock envelope

The accordion story cards are

• 15 inches long by 4 inches high
• six panels, double-sided
• coloured card stock, with matching envelope
• each card contains an original story or essay, with artwork
• plus a blank back panel for your own message
• these are über cards!

This is me, just trying different ways of disseminating my writing and artwork, like what I do with my cigar-tin stories. Anyway, leave a comment and put yourself in the draw.

after all these years we're still watching movies on disks? where are the holograms I was promised? where are my cities of light?

2011-06-21T11:32:00.008-04:00

This postal strike/lockout has certainly slowed down our cinematic education at the hands of Zip (at least that's the way C uses it, trying to indoctrinate me into the ways of French New Wave), but here's two decent picks we've seen lately ...

Let the Right One In
This movie has such good bones, and is really quite charming in all the important ways. If only the extra stuff, the supporting stuff -- like all the adult roles -- weren't so godawful, and didn't make me think of a National Film Board production from about 1983. Still, the movie is really about a pair of alienated kids, and how compassion can cross any territory, even beyond the human, and down those main arteries it succeeds very nicely.

A Serious Man
I had some idea but really I had no idea -- that Jews could be so wan and bleak and unsparing and helpless and fatalistic all at once. Oy. And this movie really gets into it. It's all very dispassionate but strangely compelling, with an ending that stuck to me for days. A Coen brother's vehicle.

quiet over there ... too quiet

2011-06-17T08:14:00.005-04:00

Say ... what's going on in Japan these days? Is it fit for humans again? Or is some atomic Godzilla running a blitz play through millions of fleeing Japanese even as I write this? All this sour-smelling hoo-ha lately -- about elections and ugly hockey and burning coastal cities and blaming anarchists for all our bad behaviour, and hell, I've just completely lost track of what's going on over there in the land of the rising sun. In the meantime, however, I did get this wonderful Mogu Takahashi poster, which was sold as a fundraiser for the Red Cross. Hope it helped. Go Nippon!

extended hours

2011-06-16T06:31:00.008-04:00

I guess those new store hours just got extended. (Mike Carlson/Reuters)

Postscript: For those of you who think my negativity is misplaced, I wasn't the only one who thought like this (or this).

soon will never be soon enough

2011-06-15T10:05:00.010-04:00

stinky here is on the cover of a travel cd case.

* * * * *

Finally, for Christ's sake, it will be over tonight: no more hockey. No more bullshit on the radio, hearing it as the lead news story. No more Cross Country Check Up opening up its phone lines to the question, Are the Canucks Canada's team?, an episode akin to asking skinheads who their favourite dictator is ("Mussolini, man. Definitely Mussolini!"){1}. This is our national broadcaster? Sonofabitch! I understand why people in Vancouver (and sure, the rest of Lotus Land) are invested -- it's their fucking team -- but the rest of us have other concerns besides an assembled collection of millionaires playing sports for money{2}.

In a stupefying little chokefest, Vancouver's starting goalie{3} has let in 18 goals in the last four games. Despite this, amazingly, his team can *still* win the Stanley Cup tonight. This will probably happen. If it does, I'll have to bear a little bit more (the victory, then the parade), not to mention all the yahoos who will be wandering down my street at 3 a.m. tonight ("Woooohooooo! Wooohoooooooooooooo!") and then that will be it.

But if he chokes again ... ah. Well, there will certainly be a riot, 'cause that's what grown men do when their team loses. Even more embarrassing, however, will be the nearly silent, shooshing sound of millions of stunted psyches collapsing, all at once, all around the country.

{1} Most days I can't decide what's more embarrassing for a publicly-funded broadcasting corportation -- Rex Murphy's general befuddlement or Sook-Yin Lee's interviewing style ("Awesome, dude! Wow, that's awesome!").
{2} The average NHL salary is 2.4 million dollars.
{3} He made 10 million dollars this year.

educating christina

2011-06-13T09:02:00.003-04:00

Queen's gave C a Master's degree on Friday, and her dad came out from New Brunswick to see it with his own eyes. Way to go, C!

And here's the real-time hand-off, when they laid the paper on her ...

some kind of ringing in my ear

2011-06-13T08:58:00.004-04:00

A wee profile of cigar-tin stories in the latest issue of Broken Pencil magazine. Which is nice.

wisdom, not teeth

2011-06-09T08:54:00.003-04:00

I was reading something mindless and fun called "500 Essential Cult Books" and C said, Oh, I've read most of those but you won't know any of them.

Really? I said. Well, how about this one ... "What It Takes to Be #1 : Vince Lombardi on Leadership". Do you know who Vince Lombardi is?

Of course I do, she said. He's a famous band leader.

* * * * *

Some other gems from my wife, lately ...

~ (doing the crossword) I need a four-letter word for a Biblical place, starting with 'e' and ending with 'n'.

~ I didn't know Hank Aaron was black! Are you sure? Because that doesn't sound right.

~ What's 60 divided by 4 again?

~ (filling out the census) When's Oona's birthday again?

* * * * *

Her dad is coming out for a visit this week so – thinking ahead – I got a whack of Oona pictures developed for C to put together in a little photo album for him to take back.

That's too fussy, she said. He won't like that.

Too bad, I said. You're doing it. Just get one of those cheap travel albums from the drugstore and then stuff 'em in, it'll be fine.

Then more than a few days passed.

Have you done that little photo album yet? I asked.

I thought you were doing that, she said.

* * * * *

She's convocating for her Master's degree tomorrow. She might be confused when they no one hands her a green jacket to put on, but it should be a nice day nonetheless.

cathy cullis

2011-06-08T09:04:00.005-04:00

Ordered this sweet, sweet little art book from Cathy Cullis, who has a wee shop on Etsy. My plan is to build up a little cache of gifts, so that when Christmas comes I don't have to go anywhere near a store, and I can try to pretend the whole thing doesn't exist.

* * * * *

In other news, I threw out my back making red potato salad last night. Yep, that's right: compared to my life, the guys from Hammer of the Gods look like school children.

under this electric cloud

2011-06-05T14:22:00.009-04:00

This racketing, tinned-wind noise: why am I being bombarded with *gleeful* news stories about how quickly the denizens of Winnipeg coughed up the cash for 13 000 season tickets for the new (or merely new again) professional hockey franchise in Winnipeg? Why is this a leading news story? And why is it GLEEFUL? Why is this something TO BE CHEERED? Did I miss something? Because the last time I looked, this was a private business concern, owned by private businessmen, and the thing about business guys is that they conduct business, and this business is almost always concerned solely with the idea of MAKING MONEY. So why is this idea of a group of private businessmen operating a professional hockey franchise all mixed up with ideas about Canadian self-esteem?

This is all very flimsy and, again, quite sad. The CBC, in particular, should be ashamed of itself. Since when is honey-mouthing over millionaires part of its mandate?

When I turn on the news I want to hear stories about the economy or the environment or the war (pick one) or the senator who self-destructed or the page who disrupted parliament with her arresting protest sign or any manner of important or compelling or just interesting news items. Save the sports stories for the sports section (or, better yet, the business stories for the business section, where you can do a fawning profile and everything).

How quickly we forget the last hockey strike/lockout, which was entirely about millionaires fighting over money.

But yes, I know, it's the Canadian game (funny, but I don't hear anyone crying out for more Lacrosse, which is our other official sport) and we love it (or, at least, we're constantly *told* we love it, even though fewer and fewer people actually play it) and the Stanley Cup belongs in Canada (even if the driving force behind the winning team is Swedish twins). I mean, if we're just going to be mindless whores about these things, maybe we could get Tim Horton's to sponsor the next session of parliament. And we could all get our tax refunds in Canadian Tire money!

Postscript: And then there it was, the lead story on the Sunday morning news ... Canucks win Game 2! Yeah yeah, some Europeans died from E. Coli, blah blah, a bunch of other people got shot at the Golan border, blah blah, but ... Canucks win!

an anniversary, in nine parts

2011-06-02T09:21:00.007-04:00

anniversary tiger number 1; India ink on Esselte Letraset paper; 8.5 x 12 inches.

* * * * *

1} Men are so false, so insidious, so deceitful and cunning in their wiles, so avid in their own interest, and so oblivious to others' interests, that you cannot go wrong if you believe little and trust less.
-- Guicciardini

2} On the CBC morning show, they were talking about valedictorians, about the importance of their awarded position, and the voice they have. Did you know that I was valedictorian of my own high school graduating class? Yup; no one else would do it. I didn't want to do it either, but that hardly seemed to matter. I have no memory, no idea what I said.

3} I won a little contest -- a print giveaway from colour + sound. Since I never win anything, this was nearly confusing. But it's sharp artwork and she's a lovely person.

4} Of course, I might not get this artwork for awhile because we're set to have a postal strike soon. I have many minds about this but in the end you can colour me down with it; they have the right to strike and if they choose to do so, good luck.

5} A wee bit too much of the hockey stories in the national news lately. Yes, I get it, there's a Canadian team in the Stanley Cup final. If I was twelve years old, I would be very excited. I also might be old enough to know to keep it to myself, because not everyone cares. Would you like to be stuck in an elevator with six people who talked about nothing but NASCAR?

6} Besides, Vancouver will probably start choking again.

7} Listening to the FIFA story, C and I got talking about which sports were most corrupt. I said soccer/football has always been right up there, on a political/administrative level at least, 'favours' (read: bags of cash) being the unofficial language of business -- although for sheer greed the Olympic committee makes everyone else look like vestal virgins singing background in the Sound of Music. And then sports like baseball and American football dirty up the other side of the coin, where it's the players who are juiced and coked and filthy with lies. So: lots to talk about.

8} Today is my work anniversary; eight years ago I started in my present job. Aside from continuous employment, this is nothing to celebrate. Let's just say that some beginnings are marred by little men with grotesque monster heads.

anniversary tiger number 2; India ink on Esselte Letraset paper; 8.5 x 12 inches.

9} Bruins in six.

go jets go

2011-05-31T12:55:00.010-04:00

The glory days.

* * * * *

Well, it happened: NHL hockey is returning to Winnipeg.

How sad.

I remember when 'it happened' in reverse, in 1996 -- when they took the team away. I was living in Winnipeg then, and the sweeping feeling was that this was a very bad thing, this thing that was happening. Happening to Winnipeg. Poor Winnipeg! Like a tornado or a hurricane or a flood or a plague. Like Delilah and the Philistines, that kind of Biblical betrayal.

And so all sorts of guys threw together all sorts of rescue plans, and held all sorts of rallies, and little kids offered up their piggy banks, and wept tears they could not possibly understand. And the team moved anyway.

And all this was sad on a number of levels.

Not least of which was its passive quality. Because it really was happening to them: some business guys (those philistines!) making a business decision and moving the team to Phoenix. Because professional sports is a business. Because professional hockey players -- at least the kind who play in the NHL -- make millions of dollars, and their allegiances run as deep as the ink on their contracts. And to weep about this is to be a child.

But none of that matters now, because they're back! Not the team from Phoenix, mind you, but one from Atlanta. Good enough. And too bad the Atlanta team -- the Thrashers -- were such a flame-out down there but, well, the people of Winnipeg still want them. Desperately. Really, any washed-up franchise would do.

Christ it would have been such a sight -- just imagine -- if the people of Winnipeg had collectively shrugged at the idea of an NHL team coming back. If they hadn't wanted it so badly. Or at all. If the corner of Portage and Main was only as noisy as the wind, instead of the horn-blaring, fist-pumping gong show it is right now.

Some cities just grow up faster than others, I guess.

fun running

2011-05-30T12:37:00.005-04:00

Oona and I (and Catherine, Evi, and Mei Mei, above) did the Family Fun Run in Ottawa this Saturday, as part of Ottawa Race Weekend. C ran the 5K with her brother-in-law. Oona and I did not run. Oona did, however, walk the last 100 metres of the race, past the finish line. And she did very much like her medal. I, on the other hand, did not accept a medal. Which C found confusing.

C (far left, waving like a maniac) ran her race in decent time. Her goal was to beat her brother-in-law, which she did. Easily. I advised this brother-in-law to keep some aspirin in his pocket, so that someone could crush them on his tongue immediately after the heart attack. And yet: he did *not* have a heart attack, despite looking like a beaver dipped in Castor oil by the end of the race.

C gets very up for all this, says the power of the crowd is intoxicating. I understand that, but I feel it's something else, too -- how often do average people get to cross any kind of cheering finish line? How often does an adult get flooded with positive reinforcement? We get applauded, yes, but not like that. This isn't some thumbs-up 'Like' button; this is a small sea of joyous faces, applauding and waving you in.

By the way: who decided that generic 'power' rock was going to be the default background music of any non-music festival? What does Lenny Kravitz singing Let Love Rule have to do with running the half-marathon? I mean, if they gave you handfuls of drugs to smoke at the end of the race, I would get it. But they don't. They give you bananas and Gatorade. And even if you're just a spectator, who decided that the music of Honeymoon Suite would enhance my experience of standing in line to buy a fucking snow cone?

Crowds disturb me. They do. I grew up in a village of three hundred people. I had a graduating class of nine -- two guys and seven girls. Being in the midst of thousands of people is ... otherworldly. I never get used to it.

And now I have a cold in my eye. What is the point of getting a cold in your eye? You're not sick, exactly -- just very tired, and murky, and your eye is weepy and cloudy and sometimes sticky. What is the point of this? If I want to walk around with red eyes and impaired vision, I could just stay up all night, drinking with Lenny Kravitz. That might be fun.

run

2011-05-27T09:05:00.005-04:00

Frenzied, Shutter-Island-type rainstorm last night, some kind of all-out assault of pellets on tin. Tin wins. Even at two in the morning, I do enjoy it when weather goes raging berserk and I'm nicely tucked out of harm's way.

Have you seen Shutter Island? My reaction to C (who wouldn't watch it) went like this: I don't think Martin Scorsese should be doing movies based on CGI and dream sequences. I think that's a colossal waste of time. And talent. It reminded me of a movie called The Ninth Gate -- all this heavy-handed playing at being creepy and disturbing when really it was about as scary as a birthday cake (Frank Langella being no more threatening than Ben Kingsley).

* * * * *

Surreally compelling interview on CBC radio yesterday morning, the host doing her saccharine, sunshine-y best with a university economics (and environmental studies) professor who talked in straight, dashed lines about how modern economics was junk, was completely inverted from reality, and how our present cultural model of constant-growth, greater-consumption was killing us. The host didn't let him go on too long, and had to toss in some o-well! laughter just to get out in one piece.

* * * * *

Rooked into some kind of Family Fun Run (?) this weekend in Ottawa (believe me, Oona and I will *not* be moving faster than the speed of walking), despite the fact that I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.

red-handed

and all before us was the long dark night

like a gun, you put it to your head

ART LAB FOR KIDS

squirrelly

you bring the rack, i'll bring the ruin

cleaning out the fridge

contrapositive

amazing

ruined

the tomboy

song

eat popcorn and dream

parachute man

it's nice and sweet

everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it

glitter

fun weather storm days

itch

bear weekend

daddy 1, magnum 0

like (insane) chanting, only with exclamation marks

anna, snow

blindekuh

some parting thoughts

well thank christ that's over with

sneak attack trickery style

the myth of bad daddy

. . . . . .

why i like this

what I watch when the person I'm watching the movie with doesn't want to watch (the movie)

early theories of the universe

some thoughts on shopping

when the getting is good

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GUY WHO FARTED (SO EGREGIOUSLY) IN THE HISTORY STACKS AT THE DOWNTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY YESTERDAY

last call

is that a haiku in your pocket?

why i like this

not with a bang but a whimper

the fountain

remembrance day

Come along, Dorothy. You don't want any of *those* apples.

smokin' joe

the rules for werewolves

free like greek

I don't get it.

all painted up and no place to go

Aron Wiesenfeld

Saturday

and how will i know which one is me?

wondering, cold water

Well, there's always the sciences.

thanksgiving my youth away

I scream for artstream

I See Darkness (Dear Darkness)

Blue

I dream

what not to do when she is two

haunted

red

Uncommon Magic

call this number again and i'll kill you

they are different than you and me

pride goeth

summer is over, i think

nine eleven

looking ahead

in my neighbourhood

see them flinging out the banner

intruded

less than a feeling

going

same as it ever was

on drowning

tangerine dreaming

the rules for summer

it's here, I can feel it

G H O S T

nauseated

found this in my shirt pocket today ...

Come along, Dorothy. You don't want any of those apples.