fin.

so. one year, one blog later.
i've dealt with some strange characters, become reacquainted with old Friends, had an adventure or two, found Two Great jobs, did a piece of art or fifty, did a bit of important thinking, had an interesting debate or two, or three, battled demons, moved, thought about books, read some interesting things in books, set my ass on fire, thought about human failings, dressed well,and delved some more into the profound language of self-identity.

and that's enough of that. without further hesitation, i now withdraw from blogland, for the time being, anyhow, to take my happy meanderings elsewhere. dear reader(s), thank you for your patronage.

Crowego

EH, our new (and as yet unqueried as to prefered blog identity) Brick Office Sprite, proffered this to me today, after a recent discussion 'bout, (three guesses), books.
it is SOOO rare that i like any poetry. unless it's ee cummings, Lewis Carroll, or from Stephen Crane's Black Riders, the best book of poetry EVER written. but this, i love.
edification to follow:

Crow followed Ulysses until he turned
As a worm, which Crow ate.

Grappling with Hercules' two puff-adders
He strangled in error Dejanira.

The gold melted out of Hercules' ashes
Is an electrode in Crow's brain.

Drinking Beowulf's blood, and wrapped in his hide,
Crow communes with poltergeists out of old ponds.

His wings are the stiff back of his only book,
Himself the only page - of solid ink.

So he gazes into the quag of the past
Like a gypsy into the crystal of the future,

Like a leopard into a fat land.

Ted Hughes.

11 down, 5 to go.

and on and on i draw...

magnet mania.

Madame Gerard and I spent our evening yesterday discussing printing methods, comic books, and then making fridge magnets at the Cameron House for the second installment of the fridge magnet making extravaganza. all i know is the organizer's name is Lise, the website (click above) is anutforajaroftuna.com, and the evening was Lovely.

word of the day.

a few years ago i spent some of my time chasing around paltry pay cheques by doing extras work for film and all that. it was this word that prefaced every role description (so to speak) i got for work. when this was required, i was the first number on the list.
and today, today, dear reader(s), i finally find out what it means.


Today's Word: Funky (Adjective)

Pronunciation: ['fung-kee]

Definition 1: (1) Cowardly (1837 Dickens), (2) depressed, or (3) smelling of old and moldy cheese. The November 1954 issue of Time Magazine referred to "Funky, authentic, swinging blues, down to earth, smelling of earth." Today its meaning is very diffuse but is, roughly: authentic, less than fresh, earthy, in the broadest senses of these terms.

Usage 1: Today's word is used frequently but the meaning is difficult to pin down; we have attempted a brief survey of the possibilities above. The adjective may be compared (funkier, funkiest) and the adverb is "funkily." The noun may be "funk" or "funkiness."

the cretin centre and the useless quest.

went to the open house for the Gladstone Hotel yesterday and it really was amazing. the Gladstone has been renovated, or revitalized, rather, according to the original building plans, and it looks Totally BEEAUUUTTIFFFUULLL. the rooms, for those not in the know, are individually designed by a whack of toronto artists and they include everything from fun-fur garden of eden murals to bookish early 20th century hideaways to buzzing brothel closets, to an easy rider theme room to fluorescent bright canadiana; take your pick.
they are going to have to handle it like Japan handles its love hotels: with a wall of illuminated photographs of the rooms from which patrons take their pick. but honestly, HOW MUCH did it make me want to be affluent enough to give up my little apartment and live by room hopping there?
this of course brings up the concern of how in effect this would be possible, given my antipathy towards all things that money tends to gravitate towards, from useless jobs, to (some) useless people, to useless objects.

which brings me to today's useless quest.

i decided today to try to love the eaton centre. somehow. at least for the 14 or so minutes i was condemned to wander through there, on a quest for a phone battery.
how can millions of people be wrong, afterall? i'm a little tired of the constant "it's all evil" shtick about these huge consumerist places. (even if it is all evil) it keeps things going...it keeps my jobs going, it keeps me (vaguely) making art...let's face it, people wouldn't make things if noone were buying...

but then i found myself accidentally tipping over an electronic rotating tie rack (oh,no, i'm NOT kidding) and somehow, somehow i lost my resolve to be tolerant.

google image search.

doing research this morning, looking for pictures of circus MC's for reference, and who is one of the pocketful number of hits i get but some guy i went to university with 10(!) years ago. i had Totally forgotten, he did some fire performance for us during a festive night of revellry at Liberal Arts College. weird small googl-ish world.

aaahhh, Rochdale.

as if TPM and Coach House and Houselink as well aren't enough, my mum revealed to me tonight that she used to make a weekly pilgrimage from Etobicoke to Rochdale (to a health food store that existed in that building in the 70's) so get the almonds and unhulled sesame seeds (or some such thing) with which she made my baby formula.
it's like some weird preordained thing, isn't it, the whole Rochdale connection. weird weird.

and the necessary update for my personal posterity.

my 14 completed pages went back down to 9 yesterday, after my first (at Last) successful forray into getting editorial advice. as we went over the story i realized that it bottomed out in two places, or teetered on the edge of excessive obscurity (not difficult in my brain.)
nearly a crisis, but nothing 7 hours of hair pulling, intense thought, tears, tea, and redrawing didn't fix. i'm back up to 9 completed ('xcept for colour), 7 scrapped, 7 new pages mapped out and ready to draw, and only one spread still a little dodgy. woosh.
it's fucking work, man.
and for what, i ask, at moments like these? WHO KNOWS.
but it keeps me out of trouble, i suppose.

pondering.

i've been pondering whether or not i want to quit this blog. i think i have (at long last) realized that there are better and more creatively gratifying things to do (when i actually follow though on them). and this medium isn't particularly gratifying to me at the moment. i realized over the weekend that if i were to describe my average day since the onset of colder weather (i work in a tiny office and then go home to my basement apartment and draw scary pictures and read comic books; no tv, no newspaper, no roommates, just me and excessive cranial activity) i suddenly become the sort of person one might well want to cross the street to avoid.
okay, that's excessive. but i have my insular moments, it's true. gaming geeks and toy collectors have nothing on me, at those times.
except perhaps the slightly acrid smell of boys who don't shower enough; the significant lack of attention to personal hygiene and social niceties.
let's face it, it's also weird. you don't have to remember any human contact with people, you can just refer back to the posting of times gone by. i have mixed feelings about this. nothing is interesting when all of it is on public record, i think.

anyhow. i'm not altogether sure, and, since my only obligation was to keep it up for a year (or see if i could), i have 'til 31 December to decide. discussing this matter with Miz R, she said she could take it over for me, and proffered a sample to see if it could pass for mine.

i was Impressed and honored.

buy nothing day...

was friday, and in celebration/dissent we biked through the eaton centre on the tail end of critical mass's monthly ride. we ended up in Dundas Square, (!) that unexpectedly donated the space to the New Kings for the evening, which was followed by impromptu jams with the Samba Allegua (i'm SO sure that's spelt wrong), and hot soup provided by food not bombs. i have to say, the televisions in Dundas Square may have been big, but they weren't the part of the evening that had me dancing, and that's all the reassurance i need as to what the important stuff is.
we ended the evening carrying everything back to Kensington on a rickshaw, and i was, as per usual, Thrilled with the self-sufficient nature of it all.

SNOW SNOW SNOW!!!!

GLEEE!

nocturnal reveries.

weird dreams about a fat disturbing clown prowling in a dark theatre basement just before show time intent on killing/kidnapping a little boy circus performer (?!?!), and people i haven't seen since i was about 10 cancelling plans over the telephone to go to the theatre with me.
probably a result of reading snippits of strange small press fiction and then going to see Harry Potter.
'xcept that Voldemort isn't fat.

an HOURS-roaming-the-bookshops kind of a night.

read this somewhere:
little boys have dolls too; they're called tomboys.

the middle stories by Sheila Heti.

how it is that i haven't yet found, read a thousand times, and proclaimed my love in the streets for, this book, is Beyond me.
Glee glee glee.

mother-ogyny and a hallmark moment.

i have known more than one guy who Hates (to some degree or another) his mother, and for reasons none of them were ever fully willing to even try to articulate, it just seemed to me to be some weird pseudo-macho reason they had for all the reasons they were/are fucked up, and it was all just very inevitable and not even worthy of discussion.
tonight's pilfered quote of choice is for those guys, should they ever happen by this humble blog; thank you MR, and Ian Brown for soliciting the piece and editing the book, which is just So Great.

"When a man speaks of hating his mother, it strikes me as an unexpected tragedy. I resist the notion that "bad" women could somehow also be bad mothers... it's like being angry with the stars—what on earth have they ever done to you but moulded your poor dust into life? ease up. even if she's a coked-up crack whore who beat you daily with a willow switch and let your poor little ass get so red and chapped it almost fell off, she's still been through a lot, and she's still your mother...

she built you in her body, man."

...

in my own non-quote-worthy way, i had a moment, standing and chatting on Spadina tonight, thinking about the Miracle of Close Friends, So outweighs my farcical tragedies and frequent complaints, and how Recent some of these have unfolded, been discovered even, in the last year like That, and what exactly am i thinking when i try to convince myself that somehow these friendships don't exist anymore for the taking, that they were reserved for when i was in high school...
(strum of a violin in the distance) eat your heart out, Hallmark, this is the Real Shit.

and my evening spent at a breakfast cereal party drinking strange concoctions of earl grey and gin, discussing science's connections with the real world and outgrowing creative projects but finishing them anyway (which is where all the growing is), and business card art shows with a man of no importance...Shannon Gerard and Scott Waters, you (and your fellow guests) Rock my world.

progress report.

i received accolades from a Worthy (albeit unwitting) opponent on Queen street this morning, who emailed to inform me that i won an inadvertent race with her cab along Queen street on my way to work. (i had no idea) furthermore, she commended me for stopping at a red at Trinity Bellwoods Park, which I confess I find shocking, given the low-risk-for-running-the-red nature of the intersection, but she wouldn't lie, bless her. so I'm making progress! without even a conscious effort, this morning.
truly astonishing.

and today...

momentary loss of faith (scramble scramble) must stay afloat (scramble scramble)...life, my extracurricular activities, everything, eeeeeeeeee......

delusions of grandeur.

and then i spent some time on the 49th floor of the cibc building at King and Front last night, and realized that of course business people feel superior, who Wouldn't staring out over the city like God from his/her cloud?
it has to affect you, you know, having that view daily...
and then the evening seeing the Lollipop People. all i'm going to do is list their instruments and you, dear reader(s) will understand. two trombones, two cellos, a double bass, a harp, a banjo, an accordion, a harpsichord, and...a BASSOON!!!!
and a vocalist.
tres cool.

i'm sorry Miz R, but i Can't resist...

and really, MR hasn't appeared in this blog for a while, has he?

MR on Wednesday: "How many Rebeccas does it take to screw in a light bulb?... (R):don't worry about me, i'll just sit here in the dark..."
i can only joke about this since we all have chandeliers at the ready with your name on them, lady...:]

my life's ambition: an update.

13 pages down, three to go. who knew?!?!?

uTOpia.

the event is Sunday at the Gladstone. no readings. just panels. All hail non-conventional book launches. 34 authors dissect our fair city and ponder possible improvements. and though i haven't read it yet (i just claimed my copy today), i've perused ALOT of it while helping to put it together, and it seems like it's gonna be Bloody Fantastic.
we'll see. it's timely. toronto needs an ego boost inside my head right now, with the early dark nights and winter coming hither. this tendency for my mind to wander to the nearest airport express at times like these is chronic.

reading material of late...for shameless posterity in times to come.

in these post-journal times of online proselytizing and kvetching, i've decided to make some attempt to record what i've been reading in a pseudo-consistent fashion, if only for my own self in days to come. so.

let's see... Trout Stanley, a bit too modern for me, but amusing nonetheless; interesting to read a play about twin sisters right after finishing Animal Dreams which used the same metaphor (twin sisters).
Nellcott is my Darling, sweet but not life-changing, I like Golda Fried's short sentences.
Exit by Thomas Ott (graphic novel) FUCKING ASTOUNDING. FFFAANNNTTTASSTICC. a silent genius.
Fell issues 1 and 2, the new comic enterprise of Warren Ellis and Aussie illustrator Ben Templesmith. the cool thing about this comic is Ellis takes a couple of pages at the end of each issue to discuss his and Templesmith's illustrative choices, that is, he explains how his panels unfold in a way that is gloriously innovative (to me, anyhow). for example, panel 1 shows a map of the area from a store to the house of the deceased in the story, with a red dotted line following the street from one to the other. the next panel is an illustration of the same street, with the same red dotted line crossing along it in real-time. panels 3-5 illustrate detective Fell watching the ghost of the deceased and then trying to catch her in his hands, panel 6 shows Fell from behind, his hand still in the empty air where it clasped the ghost's mouth.
there is cleverness at work here, in such a silent and accurate way.
and presently, the unfortunately titled but otherwise Fantastic What I Meant To Say, a collection of essays by guys, about being guys, that arrived at Brick's doorstep for reviewing (no, we don't do reviewing). I snafu'ed it 'coz i recognized some of the authors, and Gods know i could use the insight. and despite the discouraging dustcover, it's really really great. it astounds me how honest people can be in a public context. I wonder if it has to do with the editorial process. These authors have stepped forth with their stories, had them solicited even, considered, accepted, edited, massaged, encouraged, and all manner of engagement from editors, fact-checkers, copyeditors...somehow validating in a way that gives them confidence to proceed with the publication. i mean, they are really personal stories...these essays have confessions and details that I can't Imagine any guy sharing in your average intimate conversation with someone of the opposite gender, save a few select people i know in my life, and even for those, i think, context is everything.

there's also that aspect of something being less loaded when it's being shared with a faceless crowd. i imagine it's like stripping. ha. or blogging, even. it's no longer something personal by very nature of the fact that one (or one's thoughts) is/are being ogled by not only many people (or not), but many people who one wouldn't know from Adam on the street.

what a strange and unfortunate shame, that strangers are privy to more secrets than our loved ones.
well, 'til the book comes out, i guess.

the arrival of Brick 76 and what might actually be a creative breakthrough of my own.

so, Brick 76 is Finally out in the world. woohoo!

before you accuse our cover of looking romantic in a schmaltzy kind of way. temper that thought with the knowledge that the couple in the bushes are Jewish residents of one of the ghettoes during the holocaust.

on a lighter note, R and i can safely say we have made our appearance between the dustcovers of highbrow literature, albeit through a small photographic cameo.

the thrill of having something in front of me that i was involved with from start to finish in a hands-on but still non-pro-creative sort of a way, is of course tempered by the tenacious grind of constant work on a project of my own design that i have been toiling over for about a month and a half now, that is actually beginning to take on some primitive form of completion.

this pursuing of something artistic through to the bitter end is edifying. the more work you do on it the more you want to do, for multiple reasons: a) to justify the time spent on it already b) it begins to open up to you, the more you put into it, and in unforeseen ways, and c), it begets faith. in oneself, in the project, in the nature of creation.
i like this.
of course every time i open my trap to anyone to report on my progress i confront some horror that this too will soon end up in the annals of near-finished projects, due to loss of faith, loss of inclination, or just lack of confidence that it has anything to offer anyone but myself.
but whatever.
on i toil. my little project is a mere 16 pages, a chronological silent film of a comic, illustrations but no words. i look at the 11 pages i've completed (except for coloring) so far, and marvel that i seem to be telling a story. one of those old fashioned, beginning, middle and end stories. my favourite kinds.
like actually finishing a sentence.
of course i still have five pages to go (i have the roughs done for those, which has me hopeful.)

it's a somewhat lonesome undertaking, i confess. how do you relate comprehensive tales of the hours you sit at a drafting table pondering some silent narrative that is only really significant or comprehensive to you (except other people sitting alone for hours at their own drafting tables pondering their own stories and creations).
trying to have a conversation about it is like listening to someone tell you about their relationship problems, when you never liked the guy she's seeing much in the first place; you're talking across a chasm, and trying to be helpful and engaged, but actually find yourself more enticed by the seagulls flying overhead.

anyhow. it's a noble cause, to be sure, and even nobler to think i might actually, by February (my final deadline for this) be able to say i'm Doing exactly what i want to be. we'll see. enough aimless chatter about it.

"drawn from the ranks of the emotionally maladjusted or the socially outcast."

(sigh) unsols are all about the little gems.

HOW MUCH DO I LOVE HAVING A WORKING FIREPLACE IN MY HOME?!?!?!? HOW MUCH!?!?!?
let's face it. i'm ruined for everyday living.

bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS.

i put aside my little project for the evening to accept an unexpected invitation to bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS, the latest brainchild of Marie Chouinard. it BLEW MY MIND. it was Truly Beautiful and Astounding. the whole piece (like i could do it justice with my paltry descriptions) is a company of ten dancers mixing modern dance and ballet with implements from harnesses and crutches to protheses, ropes, and horizontal bars, creating this raw and beautiful Beautiful portrait of the difficulty of being trapped inside being human. dancers swung lightly through the air across the stage, touching foot down in their partners' upstretched hands and then up again. partners copulated in hanging harnesses while others pulled themselves around by their arms trapped in crutches. point shoes acted as restraints for both hands and feet, horizontal bars were brought out set up like a line from sheet music, through which one of the dancers negotiated herself, and the whole work ended with a series of cables holding all the crutches etc, while one in the middle slowly lifted a dancer up and away from it all, 'til the curtain dropped.
standing ovation, total AWE. it amazes me (when I see work like this) that dance is such a limited audience (well, the house was packed tonight, i'm speaking more generally). it seems like we all share our bodies in common, that should provide a feasible basis for understanding the work of dancers, much more so than alot of other contemporary art that gets out there,anyhow.
it's humbling, too. humbling to see what people can do with the machine they're given to get themselves around in...while some of us just slouch in our comfy chairs watching and marvelling.

thank you thank you THANK YOU for sharing your tickets, Mister Simon.

belated account of all Hallow's Eve (or the weekend preface thereof)

i have to say, somehow, sometimes, i find myself involved in THE COOLEST THINGS EVER IN THE WORLD. EVER.
the AGO put on its annual "Shadow Ball" fundraiser on Friday, and i (cartwheels all over the computer screen) got to be involved this year. though i didn't get to put on stilts or set anything on fire (about which i've been haranguing the powers that be for three years), i did get to wear a gas mask, goggles, and a parachute suit, whilst creating some cool looking light overlooking what must have been a thousand of the more wealthy citizens of fair city during their halloween revellry.
designed by Steve Lucas (creator of Breathe) and Sherri Hay (one of the geniuses (genii?) behind Peepshow), i'm going to take a small moment to try to explain it, 'coz it was a visual feast gloriosa that will never be seen again, i don't imagine.
so.
they took a huge cavern of a room which is the gallery school (probably the only part of the building that is not eviscerated with "construction" right now), and set up a scaffolding along all four walls of the perimeter.then they covered it with white fabric walls, into which had been sewn eight squares of scrim which acted as proscenium(s) of sorts. THEN. eight nightmarish scenarios were set up behind those scrims, and eight actors dressed as insomniacs were sent walking through the crowds and then behind the walls, up ladders onto the scaffolding, and into the scenarios, which were periodically lit up to act out their own worst nightmares. they found themselves amongst flames, caught buried alive underground, in a forest of maniacal chinatown flapping birds, trodden beneath giants' feet, and being chased on a hidden conveyor belt rigged so the backdrop travelled with them in their flight.

i played one of the sand dj's, i suppose you might call it; there were four projectors set up in two corners of the room with plexiglass layers of plates on which we were to fiddle with sand, water, and all manner of our own chosen sundry items; mine were xeroxed transparencies of suicide notes, one from the 18th century, and the other Virginia Woolf's (of course). these images were projected onto the walls above the scenarios, as added icing to the visual feast.

anyhow. the evening was a glorious success, marred only slightly by the AGO's insistence on mandatory safety lights (fluorescents grrr) which made things only slightly less stark than they might have been. Glorious.


(one of the actors, eating bugs.)


(view from one of the projectors, of the dining room tables, a la candlelight.)

(photos belong to Trevor Schwellnus, yet another of the builder/masterminds behind the Shadowball.)

sunday was reserved for Canzine, which has evolved from the big bop days as a kindda disorganized mess of DIY'ers selling photocopies, to those same DIY'ers who've gotten the hang of it all, and are making some Fantastic work, these days flanked at the fair by artists, installations and all manner of craziness.
i was very happily hoodwinked into helping Fran Freeman and a host of others cover a mesh corpse in hand made grass paper, while a dj did something profound and visceral through the speakers, and a forboding video played behind us. we paraded the corpse through the Gladstone and then left it nestled in some leaves a block away in the hopes it would benefit some Halloween revellers.
the evening ended with a liberal gentleman named naked Marvin, a tattooed and talented senior, who stripped down to his tattoos, to the soundtrack of a poison (i think) song, along with friendly Rich of the Brampton indie arts festival.

ah, toronto, how you do thrill me with your strange and sundry events.

accounting.

doing accounting makes me feel like a fat man on a rusty tricycle, going uphill with the wind against me.

botched friday night.

sometimes i Can't be the one to shoulder all the awkward silences.

thanks for the reminder, barron storey.

"You say that one cannot approve my mode of thought....My mode of thought is the result of my own reflections. it is a part of my life, of my own nature. It is not in my power to alter it, and if it were in my power to alter it, I should not do it. This mode of thought, which you condemn is the only comfort of my life: it relieves all my sufferings..., provides all my pleasure in this world; it means more to me than my own life. It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others."

• Marquis de Sade.
(rediscovered in tonight's perusal of the Marat/Sade Journals)

aahhhh...

well, it's easy to tell when a blogger with no television is procrastinating. it's called blogpatrol.
my phantom google-joker is now marrying me off to my co-workers via google keyword searches, it seems.
har har.
someone who's an even bigger time waster than i, obviously.
but check this one: "guy I'm dating" + "sex addict" + signs"
ha.
followed by "the worst storm in history through the world".
Better...
followed by "transferring the tremendous world inside my head into literature".
and we're back to a cheesey waste of time. welcome to blogland.

Goodness.

there were many things that linger in my mind about Goodness, which opened last night at the Tarragon.
but the one i woke up pondering this morning was the concept that perhaps people do evil as a consequence of an excess of Love.
you know, excess of Love of another person (infidelity)
excess of Love of possession (capitalism)
excess of Love of an idea/ideal (fascism/totalitarianism)
excess of Love of any one thing (addiction)
excess of Love of oneself/one's needs. (Inconsiderate/careless behaviour towards others)

and on and on it goes.
ah, ever a dangerous thing, this Love of ours. it makes culpability an ever-present threat.

the book of the play is out as well, and lovely, and printed at Coach House of course.
and i would like to say that though i didn't design it, i did help with the burning of the paper for the cover imagery.
(shrug) let's face it, my life is about small accomplishments and Gleeful pyromania.

stef lenk, accountant extraordinaire.

and now, this morning, with flayed limbs and a slight hangover lingering in my brain, i attempt to sort out my ruddy taxes for the last four years. you know, we all say money means nothing, and it's so cold and just a tool and all that jazz, but as i look through piles of receipts and records of employment etc., i have to say there is a pretty interesting reflection of my life in this world in these infuriating piles of paper. not to mention some synonymous indication of just how panicky and whack my existence has been for the last four years.

bodyworlds.

well. perhaps for people who don't sneak into anatomy labs this exhibit was Truly astonishing, but quite honestly, i wasn't as super thrilled as i thought i'd be. ok, it was COOL. i mean, flayed humans on ice skates, how can that not be entrancing in some way or another. but the fetuses looked like wax models, and i (as well as my cohorts) couldn't quite get beyond the lingering ego in the room, what with mister Gunther quoting himself on the walls next to Nietzche and Seneca and the Like, and signing his works like he could take credit for the human body itself. i'd post some drawings from the event, but it would cost me an immediate USD$5000, according to the waiver i had to sign. Ha.

supposedly the man never takes his hat off. i bet you his skull is flayed just like his work.

at LAST.

UPDATED. well, 'xcept for drawings from the last month or so. Yippeeee!

philistine.

"it's almost worth being one, it's such a great word"
- YE, friday night.

incomplete senten....

i was speaking with my cohorts today about this new project of mine to attempt to finish sentences, and the strange phenomenon that has made itself apparent, namely, that i frequently stop and return to my unfinished sentence to complete it and then move on, only to realize i didn't in fact have an end to that sentence in mind!

MR suddenly said, "but isn't speaking in incomplete sentences like speaking process? you are trying to figure out what you want to say and you speak your attempts to figure it out as you go..."

ok, HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THAT EXPLANATION for what is, let's face it, otherwise a highly unfortunate trait.

of course i was also feeling particularly, how shall we say, vocal today and deafened one and condemned the other to a visit to the ear doctor tomorrow morning. (sigh) sorry guys. think of it, though, if i was a sheep wrangler this trait of being loud would be very helpful.

ah like the autumn leaves, so too with my blog.

mopey colours to match my website. how clever and Geeky i am.

to the tenant below.

that would be me.

i came home to this letter at my doorstep from my upstairs neighbours, who i now officially love. i will quote some snippits and you, dear reader(s) will love them too.
(you have no choice.)
(i mean, you didn't actually have to read this blog in the first place, anyway. so you might as well enjoy your time while you're here.)

"Dear Maintenance and Tenant Below (that's me),
Thanks for the advice about the shower curtain. I was sorry to hear that it is still raining downstairs....It looks to me like a blind man and a monkey may have renovated the bathroom in the early 1950's; the work that has been done is substandard and shoddy and it smells like a urinal at a highway rest stop. It would not surprise me in the least if the plumbing surrounding the drain or the faucets under the tub is leaking when we use the tub... I'm not sure if it was the monkey or the blind man but someone built a removable enclosure around the tub out of plywood indicating that this may have also been a past issue. I'm really not sure I want to know what is under there, I don't think I can take the stress, but I think it would be really easy for someone to move it to have a look at the pipes and the conditions of the nether region under there. Again I am really sorry that there is leaking but I don't think there is anything we can do up here except buy everyone umbrellas..."

somehow, even if my bathroom ceiling caves in like it did three weeks into my tenancy here, at least i'll be able to sit in the rubble and have a chuckle at the pithy epistolary rejoinders quoted above, and know i owe my suffering not to them, but to the Complete Ineptitudes of Annex Property Management Group.

bibliophilic ineptitudes.

it occurs to me this morning that, considering how much i (say i) read, i rarely have much to say about books on this blog of mine. the stuff of books that is.
so i'll take a moment to make a few comments and pilfer a bit of wisdom from my most recent reading material.
last book completed (the other day): Beneath the Wheel Herman Hesse's second novel, about a poor lad who doesn't get on so well in the strict german system of fascist education/religious fervour. It was kind of an edifying read. I can imagine a young Hesse (I don't know how old he was when he wrote this) sitting at his desk fuming over all the rules and regulations and having to go to confession Again and throwing it all into this diatribe of sorts. It's pretty righteous, and a bit egocentric, which of course doesn't change in his later books, except to develop a more tasteful subtlety. Anyhow, I like him, this Hesse fellow, he makes some good points.

now i'm reading Animal Dreams. Barbara Kingsolver. mostly 'coz of the quote posted the other day, which has been haunting me since Shannon shared it with me, must have been over a year or two ago...
Anyhow. I'm not postivie about it yet. It's been a while since I've read such a meandering novel, and my tendency always seems to be "Get to the Point!". Also, the main character, some philosophically ailing twin returning home to small-town Arizona to take care of an ailing father is not exactly fodder for my devoted interest, but she seems to be this writer who will be writing and writing and then suddenly she just puts a gem in there. just suddenly. you're reading and reading and you think "ah, this is a pleasant enough story, it passes the time, something is going on, after all..." and then POW, there's a GEM.

i like that.

In my opinion, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.

googling.

i confess, i've kind of gone off this blogpatrol "what did people google etc to get here" and all that. but tonight is saturday night and i was feeling a little wacky after 5 hours of drawing bite-size thumbnails for a new hopeful project of mine. so clickety click, and for your amusement as well as mine, the last keywords googled that arrived someone at my blog: movies LCBO thighs practise.
of course.

gratuitous posting by a Loyal Fan.

click here for the captivating tale of La Muñeca (or what Miz Gloeckner was concerning herself with on my birthday). I Love blogs.

Besieged by a deadly virus.

well, i've been Duped into being sick.
it started wednesday night when a short encounter with the abode of an unassuming (and really very genteel) cat resulted in a Crazy allergic reaction that unfurled in a record time of about 10 minutes, and which i'm convinced sent my entire immune system forth in an attempt to save my swollen eyes.
instead of doing the clever thing and realizing the danger of unwarranted allergic reactions, i went to the Coach House launch anyhow and revelled my way through two glasses of wine before i began to suspect a creeping sluggishness from within.
it was at this point (I can only assume) that some lurking nasty cold virus saw it's chance and Pounced.
and i now Officially feel like HELL.
i haven't had a cold in years. i usually get a warning. Some itchy throat, fatigue, signs from god, you know. but not this time. it was a Complete surprise attack. i'm convinced our viruses have reached that point in evolution where they can think their battle strategies through. they've got the inside scoop, they've got patience, they've got timing, and they've got determination.
sigh.
this could be the beginning of the end.

when i was a little kid i used to have these weird hallucinations when i was feverish, of an expansive sheet of white paper, a chair, and an undulating pencil-drawn circle. I would somehow be standing on this weird paper landscape trying to negotiate my way to the chair as the circle got bigger and smaller and then invisible in the distance etc.
the doctors of course were disinclined to see these signs as indications that I'm truly Certifiable, and somehow i've been allowed to lead a relatively normal life regardless.
nowadays, (or nowanights, as the case may be) my feverish hallucinations were relentless spinning nightmares about film masking sheet grids and recurring page numbers.
tragic. truly.

HOLYMOTHEROFINDIANAJONESI'MGOINGTOSTARTABUSINESS!

right.
tuesday night.
last-minute thwarted plans to see an old friend, two other possible events, probably constructive as well, but i opt for the third, which is, an improvised retreat to one of the time-honored U of T libraries to do a couple of hours work on my latest creative endeavour.
a few hours later a phone call from Monsieur le Jp. a late show? why not.
we see atom egoyan's latest at the varsity and decide to wander home through the mist, because, you see, mister JP's iron horse (read: sturdy and time-honored bicycle) got stolen about four days ago, so he no longer has autonomous transportation.

we're standing at the northwest corner of Spadina and Bloor.
I'm complaining.
neither of these things is particularly unusual.
i see a man cycle by.....ON JP'S BICYCLE.
it seems that this TOO is not unusual.
something happens to my face, 'coz jp turns around to see what i'm staring at. simultaneously i say "DUDE" and point (somewhat uselessly, to be frank) in the direction of his bicycle, and he spins around and leaps forward to grab his said two-wheeled wonder from some greasy drunk man who is now loitering in front of the 7-eleven.
I'M SSSOOOO NOT JOKING.
for those of you poor things new to this fair blog, you may want to verse yourself in the events of 17th January of this year, when i too had my bicycle stolen, only to see the rapscallion that nicked it cycle by me less than two hours later and I got to reclaim the bloody thing.

of course, in very steflenk fashion, i had to shake the mofo off my bike in the middle of the intersection of bathurst and queen during a red light, and in suitably jp fashion, mister drunk man got off his bicycle amiably, insisting he had been meaning to give it back all along, and even pulled a red reflector out of his pocket and said "hey, i got you this".

REGARDLESS. all i can say is, i'm going to start a business.

on book marketing.

Miz R and i were discussing the fundamental flaws in book marketing the other day, and some doubts about its proficiency came up, nothing really new, but still worthy of mention, i think.

so most of the time book sales start with book launches. people read in public and those that watch them, one would assume anyhow, get stoked enough that they want to buy the book so they can go home and...read it in private. ha. the covetted result is the opposite of the event itself.

i mean, let's face it, us bookish sorts are not naturally attuned to sitting in large crowds while fostering our fetishes for literary consumption. that's the deal with books. reading is a solitary activity, always has been, rarely won't be.

so it seems so contradictory, putting a bunch of literary enthusiasts in a room, enthusiasts for solitude and quiet introverted pursuits, and hoping to be able to excite them with public displays of book, get them all riled up and assuming they can enjoy the same sensations from having words spoonfed to them from a stage that they gain from a cup of tea and a book in a comfy chair late at night.

R and I agreed that the actual saving grace of books was/is as intelligent friends in times of lonliness, from childhood onwards. to this day i see solitary figures sitting in public reading and frequently envy them, since i Know they are in perfect company, an accomplishment that sometimes i cannot boast.

it seems to me that books should be marketed as such: "Books: Clear and Lucid Company! Stable Things that stay put for when you want to spend time with them! Fantastic Inventions To Make You Feel Less Lonely!"

of course the fundamental problem with this tactic is that to do this we would have to start by acknowledging lonliness as a human and pervasive trait. It is a rare soul that admits to being lonely; those who do are very frequently stigmatized as obviously not worthy of company, for if they were they wouldn't be lonely, would they?
the difficulty we humans have with admitting such things, would make the buying of properly marketed books a shameful activity.

marketing books as what they really are would make them as shameful or clandestine a purchase as other strange and perverse marginalia* we seem so determined to keep fetishized and exclusive to classes of "certain sorts of people".

no wonder books are frequently considered unappealing or threatening by much of the general public; one cannot control anything that can be enjoyed by another person in solitude, and the thoughts/sensations/admissions it might excite.

not to mention the actions resulting from this. every revolution, even the small personal ones, has to start somewhere.

....
*subsequently edited due to an in-person lewd snicker from one of my readers about my previous comparison. which i feel proves my point quite adequately about peoples shameful derision of solitariness.
however, for (what i perceive to be) the common good, i would prefer that books never be thought about with lewd snickers.

bad moods.

let's face it, my bad moods are a fat bitch.
or a grave misdemeanour on the most accomodating of days.
but the one thing about them that can be of untold merit, is that they keep people from making demands of all sorts long enough for me to sit quietly and ponder my decisions about what and what not to do.

my yoga teacher at the paramount late on a sunday night.

"i'm feel absolutely sick from corn and chocolate.
i couldn't be more pleased."

one last tiny thought.

i think it was Barker who told me of a buddhist monk comparing the ego to a small annoying yappy dog at one's feet,

it was this i mentioned in our discussion about ego today, to which Rebecca responded, "well, the problem is, that one often attempts giving the dog bones to make it shut up, but the real truth is all it wants to do is yap."
SO true.

this year is going to be about ignoring the dog as best as i Possibly can. though i sometimes wonder how i got saddled with a great dane that screeches like a shiz-tu.

32 years, 1 hour, and 53 minutes old.

BLOODY FANTASTIC.

we agreed tonight that 80's music was/is/will forever be WICKED 'coz they were just So serious about their cheesiness. there was this whole cheesy passion thing going on in the eighties, but everyone was so Earnest about it. i mean Think about it, Bon Jovi "Shot Through the Heart", John Cusack holding up his ghetto blaster in "Say Anything", Molly Ringwald doing just about whatever she was always doing, "Jesse's Girl", Billy Idol's "White Wedding". they were all so serious and "profound"-esque. SO EXCELLENT. of course, this is all relative to the 90's, which was full of anger and angst and disdain, and the 20's (so to speak) which is so full of just plain depression, the 80's were GREAT.
sigh.
it's been a good night.

telling Miz Silver Slayter 'bout my latest oddities with my ghost, she's determined that he's obviously a literate old man with allergies, adding Winnie the Pooh to my computer favourites, rustling through my books (the latest noticeable occurence), and blowing his nose)...he's probably a highly appropriate tea companion.

which suits me just fine.

i'm 32. WOW. and i'm Exactly where i'm Supposed to be. WHO KNEW?!?!?

page 110.

NOW magazine, 29 sept-5 oct issue. (That's THIS week's)
YAHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! (cartwheels and All Manner of gymnastics through my kitchen.)
...
tho', in case you want to see them bigger (and of Course you do, 'coz really, it's the size that counts...)

autumn...

spent half of yesterday in some vague euphoria with no determined point of origin, the other half of the day in the usual panic of troubles and anxiety, and today in a pleasant sort of melancholy that comes from the onset of autumn. FINALLY a night to myself as well, i'm half stymied as to what to do first.
first a rest, methinks. read the new "shame" issue of kiss machine, which is Great. Emily Pohl Weary Most Generously published one of my illustrations in it, which has me tickled pink. Yippety!
nothing else of significance, i'm afraid; have eaten soup, have purchased some fudge, and have resumed my perusal of the famous five adventures.
i must confess, tho' i'm easily pleased these days, it was obviously Astonishingly easy to please me when i was nine. there is something to these books that seems like a simpler time gone by, and reading them is both a pleasure and a bit melancholy-inducing. Good Gods. i'm about to be 32. WOWW.

ardent fan, shameless groupie, Avid cult member, etc etc etc.

i LOVE Them i LOVE Him. YES YES YES YES YES.

third time lucky, Best concert so far. Truly cathartic, as always. YES. unfortunately No links i could put up or pictures i post could make it make Any sense unless you already Get it, but there it is. (sigh)

word on the street, bicycles and giant hearts.

so word on the street was today, and it just made me HAPPY. i of course spent too much money at the Beguiling's table, i FINALLY got a copy of Shari Boyle's Witness My Shame (YIPPEE YIPPPEEE YIPPEEE!!!),then i re-read bits of Brick 68 as we tried to decide which Brick to make our favourite for those who might ask, since Brick 69 was Totally sold out (which I think had been the agreed favourite).
and i must say i feel the need, dear reader(s) to share just a blip of the glee 68 brought me. sure, it's kind of a shameless plug for the publication i work for, except that i had UTTERLY nothing to do with its creation at all. but Honestly. I had read it in bits and pieces before, today was no different, it's kind of how i work with short stories and journals and such, but this time was particularly edifying.
There's this GLORIOUS series of photos from the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, and they're like these strange black and white carnival-esque shots of these women staring Straight at you, one of which was moving her head so her features have all but disappeared, and they are unquieting and Excellent.
there's also a Ridiculous bar-time conversation over the title of a book between Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, Stan Dragland and Michael Crummey that just made me Howl (a bit of it follows for your (possible) gratification, and Definitely for mine):

...L: Mouths Open.
M: It's perfect.
C: I'd pick it up.
S: Me too.
M: Yes, it's great. but it's better with a comma.
S: Not in a title.
C: You could have the story have a comma in the title.
S: There's a story called Mouths, Open?
L: Yes.
M: Her whole book is an open mouth.
S: Yes, well I gathered as much.
L: What do you mean by that?
C: It's true.
L: Yeah you're right. Jeez bye I wrote it. You think you know everything.
C: Now that's a good title.
A: What is?
C: You Think You Know Everything.
L: It is.
S: It's a bit Alice Munro. Who Do You Think You Are.
L: That'd be a good title,Who Do You Think You Are, Alice Munro - You Think You Know Everything.
C: I still think it's a good title....

and, of course, Ever Cecily Moos, and this time her uncle, or her nephew or someone. Excellent.
ANYHOW.

shall we at least Try now to move on from my banal listings of things that bring me glee to more practical endeavours?

so then i was google/searching heart/circulatory system for kicks, and for a project i've been working on in fits and starts for (what seems like) a very long time, and i came upon THIS. a Giant Heart. fit to scale a 220 foot tall person, and built for people to walk through. in Philadelphia, no less, land of the mütter museum, as well, which is pretty much one of the top five places i want to go in the world before i die.

well, this big heart officially started beating on my 31nd birthday, 1 October, 2004. sigh. it was picking up the slack on mine at that time, obviously, but here's what it looks like inside:

i'm Impressed. i don't care if it's a cheesy stupid museum model. it's Awesome. and who knew Philadelphia could house anything so interesting?!?!?

but onwards. here's the quote from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams that first brought me over to my dear computer with googling intentions:

"Why do you suppose the poets talk about hearts?” he asked me suddenly. “When they discuss emotional damage? The tissue of hearts is tough as a shoe. Did you ever sew up a heart?”

I shook my head. “No, but I've watched. I know what you mean.” The walls of a heart are thick and strong, and the surgeons use heavy needles. It takes a good bit of strength, but it pulls together neatly. As much as anything it’s like binding a book.”

“The seat of human emotion should be the liver,” Doc Homer said. “That would be an appropriate metaphor: we don't hold love in our hearts, we hold it in our livers.”

I understand exactly. Once in an ER, I saw a woman who’d been stabbed everywhere, most severely in the liver. It's an organ with the consistency of layer upon layer of wet Kleenex. Every attempt at repair just opens new holes that tear and bleed. You try to close the wound with fresh wounds, and you try and you try and you don’t give up until there's nothing left."


.........

of course what i also found were other Completely useless but gratifying nonetheless quotes, and since today was all about other peoples' work i am dedicating tonight's post to shameless pilfering and repetition, at least for a few moments before i resume my own thoughts on this and that, and my 76 proofreading duties to follow.

and no, i Wasn't googling bicycles, i was googling heart. and yet somehow.... aaahhhh.

Most bicyclists in New York City obey instinct far more than they obey the traffic laws, which is to say that they run red lights, go the wrong way on one-way streets, violate cross-walks, and terrify innocents, because it just seems easier that way.  Cycling in the city, and particularly in midtown, is anarchy without malice.
~Author unknown, from New Yorker, "Talk of the Town"


Consider a man riding a bicycle.  Whoever he is, we can say three things about him.  We know he got on the bicycle and started to move.  We know that at some point he will stop and get off.  Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it.  That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things. 
~William Golding

right. that's quite enough of that, i think...

Square.

so it's friday night, the only phone call i've had is from the automated library machine lady, and i got out of work so late the library was no longer open to pick up my books.
friday night, ladies and gentlemen.
some nights i Really wonder about myself.

schmoozing and my glorious winter scarf of times gone by.

i'm not sure why the globe and mail decided that Miz Rebecca and I were truthy worthy substitutes for Michael Redhill, but it is for this naive blessing we were grateful as we wandered around the CARLU for some schmooze party or another on tuesday night.
the great thing about looking like me during these "business/formal attire" events, is, i mean, COME ON. i mean REALLY. "business/formal". HA.
so i had free reign from the moment i stepped in. we were of the crowd pegged by the bartenders as the stragglers, which was just fine with me as i drank my gin martini with a scotch rinse (thank you, Miz R, for the suggestion) and feasted shamelessly on all manner of gustatory extravagances. R decided that really someone (her) should take it upon themselves to be the Robin Hood of Cultural Enlightenment, since Noone around us seemed to have as good a time, Or take Nearly as much bliss from the copious amounts of food available to 10,000 shades of dull creatures hovering around us in their suits and their false smiles.
in terms of cultural enlightenment for my own good self, i got to hear Mister Rick Mercer speak, and before tuesday night, i didn't even know who the guy was.
and he was funny! it's true!

but here's the even crazier thing.
now many (none) of you may remember my glorious handmade doctor seuss scarf, that has coddled me winter after winter for the last 10 years or so. it took me four or more months to knit it back in '93, and by the time i was finished it was Spring.
However.
for the 10 years subsequent, the dear old thing could wrap around my entirety about three times, and guarantee coziness in the depths of our harsh winters in the great white north up here.
'til about a year ago or so, when i lost it.
i grieved, i mourned, i figured it was fate.

Until i was watching a clip of one of Mister Mercer's spoof ads the other night, this one a take on "Ontario, yours to grow" or some such thing, with people trolloping around the city with huge pot plants.
and Suddenly, there was this girl being interviewed spoofily, standing on King and Bay, WEARING MY SCARF.

I'M TOTALLY SERIOUS.
you laugh perhaps, but it was TRUE.
they showed her three times, and she was wearing MY scarf, brown, crimson and off white stripes, with the extra tiny stripe stitch that comes from me being a terrible knitter and not being able to change colours properly, AND the identical chunks and chew marks off the edges that Also come from me being a Terrible knitter and having no proper sense of casting off or on again in new colours. my beloved scarf that has seen my neck through a third of my life on this planet, (slight pause as i wipe a tear from my eye) my Wonderful Wonderful Winter Scarf.

SO.
if Anyone knows a girl with short bleachy blonde hair that starred in a spoof ad on the Rick Mercer Monday report, PLEASE PLEASE tell her i would offer a More than Adequate reward for the recovery of my Beloved Winter Scarf, and would happily replace it with one for herself, would that she was willing to return it to me.

(sigh.)

word on the street.

and as i sit up at 1.07am, an early night for me, granted,but still, slaving and toiling to make my small contributions to this sunday's word on the street, one might wonder, is it a book fair or a homemade postcard fair for strange illustrations, miz lenk?

saturday night red light district in t.o.

the notice is short, i know, but i've been lax in my blogging ways. my friend jp (not to be confused with monsieur le jp, my yoga teaching friend) is window display/performing at this tonight, here's the plug:

Watch out Toronto! You have a new red light district but it ain’t what you think.  Store front windows on and around Parkdale’s Queen Street West set the stage for a truly unique event created specifically for the Queen West Art Crawl.  Performance artists step into the store front windows of Parkdale to unleash a collection of provocative and engaging human stories.

Willing spectators are asked to meet at The Parkdale Public Library at 1303 Queen Street West at 8pm SHARP.  There, you will receive the Red Light Guide Book directing you to the various installations.  The Red Light Project is a self guided tour and free to the public.

for more info check toronto artscape

.....

"and after the fact.... you know, toronto is doing some REALLY really cool stuff. the crawl was fantastic, jp's piece was GREAT. and i'm not even saying that 'coz i'm biased.

it's not news that i usually find performance art sketchy to say the least. i find a great deal of it seems to be doing its best to shroud itself in vaguaries and "i'm-above-my-audience" type behaviour. so to come upon an empty window with a guy standing behind it writing out in first-person narrative a detailed account (backwards, to be legible for the audience outside) about feeling self-conscious and fucked up during his adolescence about BDSM until Reagé and a GGG girl set him more at ease...and writing with a pen of all things (for a Geek a rare occurence...well, increasingly rare, to the best of my knowledge) and strangely giving this impression of being behind a computer screen nonetheless...
...the only thing that would have topped the whole thing is that if the performance had continued long enough he would have had (did you realize this JP?) to end up on his knees in front of his audience in order to write on the lower part of the window.

dude, it was Fucking Brilliant.





another favourite, tho' the picture below doesn't do it justice: Allison Rees-Cummings standing in a bowl of water collecting lucky pennies and putting them on the scales to try to weigh out either end:
"

famous five revisited.

i've been having a fickle time with reading material of late...it's not a usual occurrence for me to not be able to finish a book from cover to cover but alas, in the past couple of weeks that has been the order of the day.
well, i finally picked up an illustrated version of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde last week and it was Truly truly enjoyable. just such a Story.
then realized what i feel like i've been missing: stories. it seems so many writers/artists are trying to be clever and profound these days that they are losing sight of stories. (or maybe i'm losing sight of stories?) but honestly. saw Tim Burton's Corpse Bride last week and it was rife with great characters and art direction, but the story was FLAT.
and i picked up a Jim Crace novel the other day (I was Exceedingly fond of Devil's Larder) but couldn't get beyond the excess of description that just made me impatient and move on. maybe it's an impatience thing. who knows.
anyhow, that and a fit of nostalgia had me go forth and purchase a copy of Enid Blyton's Famous Five adventures. i was ADDICTED to them when i was a kid. it was appalling to discover only two paltry hardback books on the shelves, with only 6 of the countless tales she wrote, but i suppose all the empty boxes and countless storage vessels and odoriferous candles have made a half-decent selection of titles at that nameless box-book store well nigh impossible. (three words: unused gift-certificate)
anyhow.
the amazing thing is that Enid Blyton wrote these things in the 40's, which means it's quite possible that my mum read them when she was little as well. many mums. Cool.
and when you think about the character of George, this solitary tomboyish sort running around outdoing her two boy cousins with her sidekick Timmy, you have to wonder just how long women have been unsettled about the gender roles they've been cast into.
in some sense this is outdated; we've (i hope anyhow) moved beyond the "girls becoming men with tits" phase of feminism, but it's interesting to see how it started, and how very possibly Enid Blyton's modest books planted the seed of change in the minds of more than one generation of little girls.

coach house press's 40th anniversary

a bit belated of course, but Coach House Press celebrated its 40th anniversary earlier this week and it was FANTASTIC; a Truly Moving event.
thursday morning my liver officially moved to an as yet unaccessible place for the next couple of weeks to recover from the revellry and excess. all alcohol, caffeine, and any other adrenaline producing agent has since been unwelcome; it's peppermint tea and soporifics all the way.

anyhow, the me of about five years ago would have been Utterly Astounded to discover just how rich any one place in Toronto might be. the me of today was utterly honored to think i might have some modern-day involvement, however small, with this same place.

i know i'm going to paraphrase it badly, but Karen Hines (C/H author and playwright extraordinaire) spoke of Coach House as a place where the "word, image and the book are all treated equally".
i LOVE that. what a Truly Worthy endeavour for any place to undertake. yes yes Yes.

i do confess though...

it was All red lights, all of the time. new start next week. it's a busy time, with deadlines looming.
baby steps.
baby steps.

Brick Brick BRICK! (number 76)

this was our "to-do" list of sorts about a week ago.
Almost complete, you say.
Wow, you say (if you are feeling generous).
Astonishing, you say, if you really have nothing better to do and live the kind of hermetic and somewhat geeky and readerly life i do.
WELL.
today we assembled 167 pages of Brick 76 in our pre-press/layout session.
with Me at the helm. (so to speak.)
ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY SEVEN PAGES OF LITERARY GREATNESS, GLORIOUS ART, AND UTTER NONSENSE!
YYYAHOOOOO!!!!

i was so excited i almost peed myself.
but that's what my predecessor's puppy did and, alas, we still haven't gotten the stains out of the carpet.

sigh.
it's a Good Life.

the orchid and the orange tree.

well, the orchid is valiantly flourishing at Rebecca's window, as i look on in rueful admiration. the orange tree is doing fine as well, although it is altogether possible that i am now watering it too much.
whatever the case, on we go. would that the pots had water levels inscribed on them. one never knows what to do to maintain the delicate balance between growing gracefully and soppy messes due to torrential mismanagement of water.
ah, balance.
sigh.

happy birthday Monsieur le Jp, and HAPPY new Yoga beginnings!

so.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dear friend Monsieur le JP, my happy yogi compadre, ever calm and composed, despite his three hours of sleep last night, preparing for the Much Anticipated opening of octopus garden yoga studio.
as one of many people i know who have felt a noteable, how shall we say, "shift" in atmosphere at Downward Dog yoga over the years, i Must make a Serious plug for JP and Scott and Pat, three of the Best teachers at Downward Dog, for striking out and starting fresh with Octopus Garden. it's totally immensely exciting to me that the seed of what made me start yoga at DD 6 years ago, which I personally felt to be somewhat diluted by DD's evolution and movement forward, has been uprooted, replanted, and recreated with care and professionalism in the annex. so i wish the best and all peace for Downward Dog, and i wish Even Better for Octopus Garden.
what follows is my shameless bloggey plug; since the spammers have invaded my blog, i feel only a bit less guilty indulging in a bit of shameless marketing: GO GO GO to Octopus Garden if you are a yoga person. go if you Aren't. Seriously. Go.

window gardens,Drunkenness, and more thoughts on editing.

well, it seems like i've become a raging alcoholic, seeing as i've been rather inadvertently Drunk for the past six days. i blame cottages, greenery, fresh air and subsequently Miz "Panty" (grr)* Silver Slayter's birthday....HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIZ SLAYTER, i say, as i stumble groggily into the office, sunflowers in hand, and back out to the patio after the work day is through.
don't get me wrong, though, Bacchus' appeal has never been more apparent, in these last flailing nights of summer and patio life.

we are attempting a trial separation of our garden windows as of today, for a reason that i ruefully confess has some validity...it seems that for all my complaining about the dead plants, i've been Woefully neglectful of watering them..Woefully.
i cruelly decided this morning that our dying orchid was fit for the garbage, at which point Miz Slayter digustedly stepped in to rescue it and took me to task on my dismissive ways.
she has taken the orchid to her caring/nurturing window, and i've resolutely made a...resolution... to coddle our orange tree on my side of the office that we may see more fruitful results than our first little orange, which was valiantly orangizing and then fell off and is now disintegrating into the soil, no doubt due to my slovenly watering duties.
sigh.

further discussion about the art of editing yielded this idea that i think might be part of what makes editing so difficult for me. the excruciating thing is this notion that anything needs to be left behind, that anything is less valuable.
it's like Love. (in the Grand all encompassing sense of the word). i've never really defined it for myself as being about Less. or not so far anyways. the idea that something so Big could be about Less is just Very weird to me.
but it is, sometimes. R explains it as a paring down of the proverbial greater truth. of being just as conscious of the words/ideas (etc) that get in the way of speaking your heart and thoughts clearly, as of the words with which you do so.

as of right now we are so close to having a complete Brick 76 that i'm Giddy.
all that's left,practically, is the physical Making of it. and that is MY JOB!!!! WOOHOOOO!!!

......

the "p" word was for my cohorts edification, not mine, i must clarify. i still think it's an atrocious word. ugh.

okay.

so it was about six red lights today. but 4 of 'em were t-junctions, and the other two i did slow down and ponder before running 'em.
and that's out of 6 bike rides...'bout 1 1/2 hours worth...

flowers.

headache.

everything i need to know i learnt from somebody else's dog.

i spent a GLORIOUS GLORIOUS and totally unexpected weekend at a cottage with five lovely people, four of whom were complete strangers before the trip. all this thanks to two last minute cancellations and a fortuitous phone call from my friend kari.

during our first of a couple of canoe trips of drunken revellry and skinny dipping, we had to leave one of the dogs (a sheperd/lab half breed) behind 'coz she was so exciteable her owner thought she would tip the canoe as we headed out.
. . .ah, labradors.
they are my favourite dogs, of course.
and as we rowed away and she ran after us along the land until she could no longer follow, i thought, yes, that is the problem with labradors.
then we saw a labrador in a shop on the drive back and it was exciteable for Absolutely No reason when we walked by it, and i thought it was Highly Unnecessary and being just a little bit stupid. and of course the poor owner was left to tug mercilessly at it as it whinnied and jumped and tried to make its way after us. how people live with them, Especially in a city where they can't possibly be around enough to cater to them, is Beyond me.

anyhow. labradors aside, there was much drinking, much conversation, So Much Bonfire, and food the likes of which i rarely eat any more. Complete BLISS.
i have not, in the past, seen myself as someone who would enjoy a cottage stay...in general, being somewhere that quiet for more than a day makes me Insane.
but it was unexpectedly welcome, and allowed the dust to settle significantly on my worries of late regarding drawing, writing, book-making, and other such idyllic notions.
amongst other things i finally made the decision to let this whole book notion, whatever i mean by that, Drop.
THANK FUCKING GODS.

now i can work with what i'm actually doing for a change.

red lights and email too.

well, i haven't quite successfully stopped myself from running all red lights this morning, but the ones i ran i ran very slowly at least.
baby steps.
as for email, my other great addiction i am (sort of) attempting to cut down on, the process (or non-process, i guess) is TORTURE.
GAH.
Cursed be the empty in-box! where is everyone this friday? bloody long weekend.
how very un-zen/buddhist/all-other-religions-preaching-emptiness of me.

and last but not least for the day...

i stopped on my bicycle at my first red light in a Very very Long Time, at a traffic-less intersection no less.
will wonders never cease?

and Morree edditting, and unix thingeys i don't understand.

well, the former part of the day was compromised by intimidating attempts to change unix code (?!?!) to clarify my presence on a network at c/h. of course the computer defied all logic and fairly straightforward instructions and eradicated the computer administrator, making all files visible and normal looking, but completely inaccessible. which brought things, of course, to a full stop.

so, with nothing more to be done i moved on to my editorial=esque duties for Brick, and was ever astounded at just how much there is to it. the Amount of changes needed to a paltry (in size that is) four page essay. and there are More and More and More again. it reminds me of a conversation a while back about editing, where it was pointed out to me (by RSS? no doubt) that to be a Good Editor is to be someone obsessed with finding and correcting Error.

well at least with the written page things are straight forward. (sort of). rules, precedents, strategically placed punctuation.

would that there was a chicago manual of style for living life.

apoptosis.

all this discussion on cells and whatnot from the other night have reminded me in my late night insomnia of Howard Bloom's Global Brain, a ruddy great work of genius that i've been pondering over for a long while in my own dimestore philosophizing on the human form and how it's reflected in this manufactured world of ours.
and so i opened up this clever tome to apoptosis, otherwise known as cell suicide:

apoptosis is a firecracker sting of self-destruct routines preprogrammed into nearly every living cell. its fuse is lit when the cell receives signals that it is no longer useful to the larger community. between self-crippling immune systems and self-defeating conduct, isolated individuals vastly increase their odds of death.

i find this interesting when contemplating memories and history of all sorts (also relevant to previous conversation on cell regeneration). they die off when they are no longer helpful, i imagine.

sigh. i've been having another go this weekend at my reading towards some educated understanding of the human body, and what it is Really On About, with its complexities and mysterious ways. i feel like if i could simplify it for myself, i'd do a better job at using it for what it is meant for here.

of course, right now, what it's meant to be doing is sleeping. so with that, to bed.

ah, the dance cave.

oh, yonder late 20/early 30 somethings who yearn for days gone by...i hear the "dance cave" and think somewhat lamentably of geeks trundling their way to its dingy environs for cheap drinks and even cheaper tricks on a weeknight...and then i go there myself for a friend's birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURA NANNI!) and it was Just Bloody Brilliant.
not so much the club, but then, i've didn't find clubs brilliant back in the day when i was meant to either...ah, but nostalgic droning by mister Smith and mister Morrissey and mister Reznor (still angry after all these years) and a great big floor to jump around on...Yes Yes YES.

eeeddddiittttiiinnggggg.

when a person can lie down on the office floor and take spontaneous naps, write inadvertent blog postings of no evident importance to the world, and contemplate trips to the lcbo for a much needed bottle of wine, it must be admitted that a person is in a good work environment. sigh.
that said, i must confess i am tired.
ah well, the spiffy urban life of a...spiffy urban person. ha.

pithy preponderances from a friday night.

well, MR, in his valiant efforts to oust RSS from her throne of primary favour for immortalizations of pithy wisdom in my blog of late, proffered four gems for pondering during friday night's dinner conversation. (well, it was very possibly more, but Rebecca and i promptly went off and spent the rest of the evening imbibing just enough to make my memory somewhat short of perfect, coming back to these scribbles two days later.)

things began with a round table discussion over sushi on the nature of true love, and whether or not there actually exists One True Love. i think the consensus was that there isn't just One person. MR proffered the notion that people reach a point and make a choice and both partners make each other the One so to speak, through accomodation and acceptance and Love of that person, and, inevitably, some amount of mutual compromise.
the One, by this description (or my understanding of it anyway), becomes this mutual constantly living creation, and also one perpetually full of surprise and newness in terms of action, reaction and mutual Respect and Compassion, which is a notion i Really really like.

of course love is also the Utter Nimiety of Glorious food we consumed before the topic of conversation shifted to cell regeneration, which no doubt came up after RSS's (true!) tale of the woman who sneezed and misplaced her eyeballs out of their sockets.
in an attempt to blow our minds (as opposed to our eyeballs), MR pointed out that human cells regenerate every 7 years. they are constantly growing and combusting, making it inevitable that any one person becomes physiologically a Completely different human being every 7 years.
of course what happens is that as cells die off they transfer information to new cells to keep it all going, but of course that information inevitably becomes second generation, like photocopies. which are of course followed by photocopies of photocopies, until eventually all that is left is a translation of some prior time, somewhat simplified, exaggerated, the bare bones of what was once a richly detailed occurence.

according to this premise then, history doesn't actually exist. At All.

i wonder if this means that if i photocopy any one piece of writing, any one photograph, any one drawing, any one instance of my life enough, i will have a better sense of what it will look like in the future?
no wonder we're all so addicted to reproducing things in this western world of ours.
and thank Gods it means we are very possibly working towards a simplification of the whole Matter.

---
i need, at this point, to digress momentarily and put in a quote from Don Paterson (which appeared in Brick 75...i know i'm an Atrocious bibliographer), i totally revisited it today as a result of this train of thought.

...we close this...gap between poet and reader through publication, a sacred duty and the aim of the poem. The poem starts as wholly yours and slowly ceases to be so; the process is one of gradual publication, gradual exposure - gradually reading the poem as if it were someone else's, because your aim is to make it someone else's.

because publication is not much more than a form of reproduction... that makes it a way of transferring ownership of your own history, non? but also translating your own existence into more universal terms.

okay, back to our regularly scheduled posting...

---

somehow the conversation moved onto 20th century painting, which was defined at some point in the past by someone very clever as art is women looking at men looking at women.
this prompted me to wonder what reading today is...is it much the same thing? one of the frequent subjects of discussion at Centennial was readership and the market for books as a product, the fact that little boys don't read, the fact that most females do, and what in fact are we all reading about then, since so many authors are male?

AND, it seems the same is somewhat true of films, since so many "modern female heroes" are in fact men with tits. we aren't glorifying women by making them kung-fu heroines and gun-toting tough broads, we're ignoring the very differences that separate the genders in the first place.

hmm. that's only three pithy preponderances, isn't it. and as i go through my mind i suddenly think there must have been five pithy preponderances, for it really was a Fruitful evening of that sort, my Friday night.
alas much was lost in a cloud of post dinner cigar smoke and queen street meandering.

well, that will do for now, and as MR is now out of town it is RSS's turn to reclaim the crown.

Dear associate writers, clever philosophers, and purveyors of fine aphorisms, places please.

and because they're all very relentless, these oddities...

and Monday, Yet Another Strange encounter with my past.

this guy blared his horn and peeled around a car to miss a red light and nearly hit me on my bicycle at Bloor and Bathurst.
i frowned, as i am wont to do when i'm on my bicycle and drivers are bastards, until staring at the driver as he veered by i realized he's someone i knew in an odd context from THIRTEEN years ago.
THIRTEEN YEARS.

what with all of this hearkening back and in this case baffling and none-too-apparent nostalgia, i decided to heed Barker's words and google all manner of nominal variations that represented my good self in days now gone. just to see.

and it's true. nary a reference.

i guess that's as good an argument as any against nostalgia.
and in favour of succinctifying names or adopting personas.

hoody.

birdy.

ah, so lovely. so innocuous.

and yet still pouty looking.
oh well.

today a bookmark...

tomorrow the world.
www.girlsmissguided.com
YYYEEEHHHAAAAA!!!!

the Greater Truth.

i think it's the mere need to blog something that calls to mind the other day's conversation, when R and i discussed Honesty. i was saying that it was this religious tenet of mine for years and years to be relentlessly (and quite often offensively) honest down to the tiniest detail.
then along came this idea of the Greater Truth. from somewhere.
for some reason i think it was alain de botton, who's really just a Bloody Brilliant author,
the Greater Truth. the idea that noone will tell you you have an ugly baby.
and noone should.
someone asks "do i look good in this outfit?" and really, you're none too impressed. but the person asked is a loved one, and for that reason, they look Great. the outfit is Insignificant. the real question becomes apparent: "do you love me do you care about me do you find me attractive (in this outfit)?"
the Greater Truth is Yes.
the importance is to speak to the Greater Truth i think, when dealing with conflicting feelings. what's more important? my honest feelings about an ugly outfit, or my honest feelings about the Loved one wearing it?

fashion sense.

i had cleverly devised an outfit yesterday that i assumed to be a little less than utterly boring in my limited-by-laundry resources, wearing a bunch of slip-like garments and tops to otherwise excite some completely unassuming trousers.
and then promptly stepped out of my home to bike to work in a MONSOON.
upon arrival, as i stood and sopped all over our historical building stairwells and lovely carpets, i realized that fashion was not to be the order of the day, and changed into my unassuming black shirt and shed all slippey things and hung them about the office to dry.
so of course Miz R came in to her place of business to find what looked not unlike a 1920's brothel.

which of course led to discussion about the 1920's, and the fact that i was quite convinced i had found the ideal work cohorts when R came to our first introductory meeting so many months ago in a fedora. and as i said yesterday, in a way So Pithy that it cannot escape being blogged about, she might as well have been wearing a lamppost and a foggy London night, it was so Apt a headpiece.

on the nature of misapprehended postings.

i would hereby like to retract my previous misapprehended posting and post my accolades and praise to Rebecca Silver Slayter, as the smallest token of gratitude for allowing me to constantly pilfer her wisdom and pithy remarks for my humble blog.
let's face it everyone, i am but a humble medium, nary a prophet.

RSS, will you ever forgive me??

on the Useful nature of literary pursuits.

and it was the other day now, that our lunchtime discussion was on the nature of literature and doing useful things in the world. this concerns me, sometimes, that my interests in gratuitous literature and arts are self-serving and somewhat useless.

and as we commiserated over the shared experience of being little kids with no friends but an eternally welcoming corner with a pile of books, Rebecca declared that Somewhere out there are lonely 9 year olds being kept alive and nourished by books, "and it is Them i am serving by keeping this stuff Alive".

how Totally Fucking True.

HERE HERE.

thoughts on specificity.

Miz Rebecca and i were discussing the world today, as we are wont to do, and it came up that in some way i might be in the wrong job 'coz of my conflicting love of art and editorial, and what my skills are more appropriate for and all that, and it made me think about how specific the world is getting. there is so much information and redirecting to appropriate agents and targeted marketing and focus groups and all manner of that sort of insanity, so that we have less and less opportunity to do anything but that which we're supposed to do.
which is liberating in one way, and completely Terrifying in another.

sign outside a store.

"gardening, yoga, bubblebaths, medication,
and still i want to smack somebody."

YYYEEEEEHHHAAAAAOOOOOYYYAYYYOOOWWEEEEEEEEE!

and more of the above.

SPAMMED.

yesterday i reneged on my no-anonymous comments soapbox so as to accomodate my fine friends who would otherwise be loyal and accountable commenters, but don't feel the inclination to start their own blog to do so.
it's of Greater Importance in this conflict of mine.
and today i got Two Spam messages blogged as comments.
i've only managed to track one of them down and delete it.

(insert all manner of crass language and Furious expletives here)
i feel violated.

JUMPING NUTS OF CHRIST.

12 days ago i ran into an ex i hadn't spoken with or seen in 6 years or so.
two nights ago I was sitting at my computer (of course) at 3 in the morning, and got an email from another old friend i lived with for a spell in Australia and haven't seen in 4 years.
and now, Now, it's 1.22am, and i just got ANOTHER email, at This moment, from yet Another character from my sordid past, this one from a surreal stay in Sweden in 1995 (in and around)
WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?!? this is Complete Insanity.

no really.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!?!?
i'm not complaining of course... it's moments like these where i feel like something is going on Way beyond anything i know about.

that and getting locked out of my own bathroom a few weeks ago, a picture leaping off my wall in the middle of the night and dis-enframing itself, and a snotty poltergeist kleenex (or so i would assume, i didn't examine it very closely) found on my floor when i arrived home...there are forces at work, i tell you. forces at Work.

the Very Worst Thing.

to not be able to Help someone going through a painful time. it's the Very Worst thing.
especially when you've been there, or somewhere similiar, yourself, and there's just nothing you can do but stand on the other side of it and watch it happen. 'coz it's no longer difficult for you, but you can't give that knowledge away, if it's even Knowledge...
i HATE this.

word of the day.

ok so it was the word of a couple of days ago, but it's such a Good one!

Today's Word: Gardyloo (Adverb)

Pronunciation: [gah(r)-di-'lu]

Definition 1: An exclamation to alert passers-by of slops or dirty water about to be dropped from a window above their heads.

Usage 1: The inhabitants of upstairs Edinburgh (and a few other areas of Scotland) traditionally shouted this warning before emptying their wash bowls and slop buckets onto the street below. It is a good word to know when strolling about Scotland, even if you don't use it much yourself.

Suggested Usage: If you are a college youth with so little homework that you have time to drop water bombs on innocents entering and exiting your dorm, you should show the courtesy to shout, "Gardyloo!" before "Bombs away!" At least the Scots will duck (get the pun?) But why restrict this rippingly cute word to warnings of plummeting liquid? "Fore!" on the golf course always struck me as a limp sound, too easy to ignore. I would be willing to bet that if you shouted, "Gardyloo!" far more people would make way for you.

Etymology: Philippe Auguste, who ruled France from 1180-1223, according to legend, received the contents of a chamber pot on his head while strolling through the streets of Paris. The upshot of this misfortunate incident was that all residents of Paris began to exclaim, "gare à l'eau!" (look out for the water!) before dumping their dirty washwater (and more sordid liquids) out of their windows onto the streets. Once the residents of Kiltland had added their magic to this sophisticated French phrase, today's word was created. (Leave it to Katy Brezger to find such a useless word with a silly sound attached to an absolutely fascinating story about us and the language we speak.)

—Dr. Language, yourDictionary.com

for the purgers amongst us.

by George Murray, first printed in Brick 73, permissions and rights waived for a lifetime of ice cream to the managing editor.

a clarification of the Cecily Moos Affair (or one of the many reasons i Adore my job.)

the following is an e-missive i sent to my fellow co-workers upon discovery of factors of Some significance regarding one of our esteemed contributors to a great many Br--cks. (i'm cancelling out the middle words to keep errant googlers from spreading the word)
i think the circumstances should clarify why this job is the most Perfect job ever, and why Everyone in the world should read Br--ck.

my dearest colleagues,

I would just like to say that I'm slightly offput that no one felt fit to tell me that Cecily Moos was a fictitious author. I had developed an inadvertent affection for Ms. Moos, wondering who, how, and why she was affiliated with Br--ck, what took her to Denmark, and how on earth I might one day garner such an exotic life myself, with such grand and respectable affiliations.

so Imagine my crushing disappointment, when Miz Rebecca, said this morning, somewhat tentatively, "you Know that she is fictitious" when I asked how I would get her contact details for the Brick excel file of contributors for our upcoming issue.

now I've had illusions aplenty dashed in my life. God, Santa Claus, a significant other or two, but none can compare to the melancholia I felt upon hearing this news.

i've since recovered (sort of), thanks to lunch and comforting assurances that even tho' Ms. Moos is fictitious, she's alive and
well in the parallel universe that is Br--ck Literary Journal.

but mind how you go in the future, my beloved colleagues. I am most fragile when it comes to my illusions about figures in the literary world, and most specifically those that decide to up and move to Scandinavia.

all this said, Monsieur Redhill, I need Ms. Moos current contact details and bio for Brick 76.

all thanks and cautions for the future,
stef

the problem with vacations

is that i go right back to staying up 'til 2am and then getting up at 8am subsequently. it's a mixed blessing, this state of rejuvenation!

slightly useful.

a Hessian discussion beneath a willow tree this weekend about being useful in the world had me once more feeling melancholy that the things that bring me Great Joy (ie. drawing, reading, writing, setting things on fire) are very likely of utterly No use to anyone else on the planet. which is a problem when one is trying to find a fulfilling direction that is not just worsening the worry of self-absorption and the resultant isolation and arrogance that comes from that.
then, checking my work email to fleece it of some of the gratuitous spam that is very overwhelming first thing in the morning, i found another response from a writer who had sent a lovely piece to us, but alas, not a Brick worthy one. she was so thankful for the kind words (which really were very cursory, but did come from a real place, and having read her piece), and i thought perhaps that could be a useful thing.
i really really enjoy reading the Unsols. not always, but we get alot of good and Important work, even if it's not Good or Literary "Writing" per se. How crucial to keep people aware that the very fact that they are submitting work for consideration is a victory and of Great Merit.
it's interesting to me that it is a challenge to find merit in things, whether it be my own accomplishments or those of people i don't know. it doesn't come easily, but it's Immensely fulfilling, this line of thinking.

life in bowmanville.

i'm going to try to resist posting the 49+ photos i took of our campfires and of the clouds, and focus instead on photos indicative of the cultural significance of our camping trip...this from jolly Bowmanville, where we got victuals before plowing into the national park...

compass.

jupiter, deers, bonfires, and my Friend Jody.

you know, i don't see my friend Jody very often. we both veer onwards in our crazy lives, and see each other, i don't know, once every six months or so. but she So Very Frequently seems to appear when i'm on the cusp of power surging insanity, and resets everything with her perspective and just plain excellence of being.
this time, she invited me camping, out of the blue. and off we went, for two days, to Presquile, somewhere east of here and on the lake.
and we got to make bonfires, and breathe real air, and see a Real Deer (!) and she sat on the beach and looked at her astronomy magazine centrefolds (of galaxies, dear reader(s), of galaxies) and i my Colette novel of Parisian and solitary extravagance, and it was TEN THOUSAND SHADES OF BLISS.
AND we got to see Jupiter! with Four of its Moons! you see, Miss Jody has a fondness for astronomy, and has a telescope, and finally we got to see a Real night sky. and, i KID YOU NOT, the planet itself with four of its accompanying moons, and i Watched as it MOVED ACROSS THE VIEWFINDER and OUT OF VIEW 'coz the earth is rotating So fast.
it was Truly astonishing.

Lakes and Oceans. they remind you to be humble.
fire does too.
how can i be unthankful or whingey in the face of these things?
or upset with anything at All, for that matter?
in short, i Can't.
Not At All.

came back tonight and went to the fire parade on the island. more bonfire. the Very Best Best BEST things in the world Ever. and somehow it seems like strange epiphanies of something or another are going on, i ran into a friend from a previous lifetime, and that was rather remarkable...
...and then some strange math student came up to me and this other guy and told us about how he got rid of his apartment so he could buy a boat and now he lives on it, and every two weeks someone comes around and sucks out his holding tank (?!!?) and then he's really happy 'coz he can use his bathroom without worrying any more, and somehow, somehow dear reader(s), it turned from a rather novel account into a Highly Unfortunate incident of Too Much Information.

inner growth.

disembodied hand.

my friend Monsieur le JP was over for a short time last night, and said that if he saw my hand drawing without the rest of me attached to it, he would be quite convinced that it was a different person.
i like that.
partially 'coz, at Last, i've been able to take a few hours to draw.
and since it is my hand, hopefully the peace will move upwards.
the "moving in" errands are FINALLY dwindling, bit by bit, and after the first two weeks of Hell, (i mean August) i might actually recover a few hours a day to myself again. or to Anything that involves me Not thinking or worrying about Everything except for myself.
sigh.

tourism.

i've decided today that being a tourist in one's own life and one's own head makes for a Grand change of perspective.
though i imagine, looking out the window, that i will need an umbrella for this time around.

new home. ( a senseless rant of exhaustion.)

well, it's been something. the 8 hours of phone calls, phone cut-offs, billing misunderstandings, the 40 minutes on hold at a pay phone for technicians who didn't show up, the cancelled phone line 3 times over, followed by a repairman coming to install the Same phone line, the boxes, the stubbed toes, the complete lack of time to accomodate any of this, and then, last night, returning happily from dutch dreams and a Lovely evening of biking and swimming and frivolous relaxation (one of the first nights in Ages), i found a ceiling tile in my bathroom caved in, the floor flooded, and the pipes doing something in between dripping and Spewing water into my cozy abode.
Awesome.
but i got to meet the neighbours above me at least. poor dears. at the ungodly hour of 12.30am.

Geeking.

it's funny, as much as i hate potheads, the one thing i have always admired quite infinitely about their personalities is their constant inate ability to share. it's not ever even a question, that's just the deal.
i have found a similiar thing with hitchhikers (or those who pick them up).
And also with Geeks. people who Know about their computers are Immensely compassionate, and I have had no end of invaluable support and help and imparting of wisdom from Geeks in my own era of computerliness, more support and patience than I can even claim to have received from both parents.
This is a Huge thing for me, and probably part of my love of all things computer.
so today I got to give a little back, as my friend Rebecca has now entered the uber-modern age, finally replacing her 7 (?) year old laptop with a new one.
just before I went over to help her partition the drive, i had a moment of self-doubt, and called JP to make sure that his laptop (same as Rebecca's) was functioning fine on partitioning, is there anything i should know about powerbooks, etc.
he reminded me that i was the one who showed him how to partition things.
i said oh that's True, isn't it, and felt Really Very Proud of myself.
and then off i went and partitioned R's laptop and it's just such a useful thing to have done to one's computer (and to those of you who don't know what this means, it's Not hard At All, it's Very Simple) but still it makes me Immensely happy (yes I'm serious, Miz Rebecca, if you are reading this!) to have done so.
sigh.
i may never pick up hitchhikers (I still don't have my drivers' license) but i can safely help people with Geeky things. It's one thing I am good at in a very quantifiable way. Rational, measureable, and therefore (to me, anyway) comforting.

Yay.