LifesWhispers

Why I like typewriters

2011-10-23T12:54:00.002-04:00

What can I say, I like typewriters. I like feeding it pages and hearing the clicks and creaks of its movement and the punch of its keys. I like seeing a stack of my first draft physically continue to rise because it's sitting next to the typewriter. It's not lost in the some electronic world of binary code, dependant on expensive equipment and a stable electrical supply to access.

Look no further, it's on the table right in front of you! Just be sure to keep the open flames away from it.

If I was cynical I could boil down my love of typewriters to some form of hipster bullshit. Like fedoras. People always ask my why I'd put myself through such a task of writing a novel on a typewriter, when I could just use a computer. I could tell them that every writer has a method for how they write. Hemingway wrote standing up on a typewriter, Capote wrote lying down on a sofa with a pen and yellow legal pads, and Annie Proulx begins long-hand before switching to a computer. Everybody has their method. (As for myself, I write all first drafts of any project - novel, short story, poem, whatever - on my typewriter, then transfer them to my computer for editing.)

My reasons are simple. First, I feel that writing on a computer directs my attention to how a story looks, rather than what it's made of. In other words, I spend more time on presentation than substance. Whether it's the constant back-spacing, or ignited rage at the red underline, I find computers to be distracting during the creative process of the first draft.

With a typewriter, I don't worry about mistakes or typos because there isn't an easy way to fix them, so I don't worry about them until editing time. I believe this allows my train of thought to flow more easily. And the longer I can maintain that flow, or "juiciness", the more productive I am. This also allows me to maintain focus on my story and its details, rather than the details of font size, save as, and et-cetera.

Typing on a typewriter is like playing a musical instrument along to a metronome. The sound the keys punching paper through the ribbon sounds like the tick-talk of keeping time. In a sense, the sounds the keys make sort of help keep the tempo of your thoughts as you get them out onto the page.

My second reason relates to editing and crafting a finished product. I'll admit, I'm a writer, not an editor. My strength is in the creative process, not in revision. But I want to improve. And typing on the typewriter helps with this. Because you can't fix mistakes with a typewriter, as I've already said, the first drafts are littered with typos. Due to this, after I've arrived at a first draft, I then retype, word-for-word, the entire story onto a computer, where editing is easier.

This forces me to concentrate on each and every character I've typed into the story. From there, I make a series of additions and subtractions in the formation of second or third drafts until I'm happy with the story.

Typewriters might be old school, but I've found writing a story in this way really helps smooth out the process of creating the story, and sharpens my editing skills. What the hell, I'll feed a little paper for that!

America (2011)

2011-10-01T10:13:00.001-04:00

America I’ve given it my all and you left me with nothing.

America five-hundred dollars credit, September 30, 2011.

I can’t afford my own peace of mind.

America when will you let me take off my clothes?

When will you be empathetic?

Will you ever stop sending our best eggs to die in deserts

and middle eastern streets?

America what plans are you concocting while we sleep?

I won’t let my emotional life be run by your atomic bomb.

America I feel sentimental about the West Memphis Three.

I studied Castro in school and downloaded music and I’m not sorry.

You should have caught me abusing Napster.

America I’ve checked into Hotel California.

America live fast die fun.

Forever young.

America when will you stop funding the human wars?

America free Tookie Williams.

America save the Arab-Americans.

America Mumia Abu-Jamal must not die.

America WE ARE TROY DAVIS.

America why are all your hospitals so full of tears?

When will you be worthy of your millions uninsured?

Leave my Medicare alone.

Go fuck yourself with your HMOs.

I just bought myself a gun so I can feel safe in my bedroom.

America look who’s wearing the strap-on.

America this is freedom of expression.

My ambition is to write despite how hard you make it to keep a pen.

America this continues to be serious.

It’s serious on the news in the streets in the schools in the churches.

Everybody thinks this is serious except for YOU America!

They mean food when their stomachs growl.

They mean medicine when their coughs do the talking.

They’re trying to speak when they go quiet.

America are you paying attention?

America you’re becoming quite greedy.

ME wants Big Oil.

ME like skyscraper and concrete landscapes.

ME have foreign Tar-Sand dreams.

America China is still rising against us.

America you don’t know who to go to war with.

America it’s them bad Terrorists. Them Terrorists and them Freedom Fighters.

Them Terrorists wants to blow us up again. Them Terrorists fly our planes.

Them Terrorists is suicidal and crazy. He wants to blow us up with envelopes

out our own mail boxes.

America all that’s left in Oklahoma is the Tree.

America but it is you and I who are still perfect.

America I am Canadian and this is the view I get from the television set.

America that wasn’t icing sugar you used to sweeten the Winnipeg sky in 1953.

America when will you fuck off and let me be?

America when I was eighteen years old I was watching the news with my mother and it showed us images of kids running out of their school with their hands held to the back of their heads and they were following the police officers while guns were firing and the injured kid crawled across the library floor and dangled outside the window for all the cameras to see and still inside were two kids with guns and bombs and trench coats who walked around their school and killed all the jocks they could shoot and then they killed themselves.

Then there was Virginia Tech.

America then ten more innocent holes in the Beltway.

America you still don’t understand what happened to Ron Kovic when he came home.

The Old Man can’t fish in the Gulf of Mexico.

America my name is Forrest Forrest Gump and people call me Forrest Gump.

America shit happens.

America I’m imagining there’s no heaven and I like what I see.

I won’t find your Jesus until I’m ready.

I believe I’ll finally find Neverland.

America I’m a super freak I’m super freaky.

America I’m going to keep on rockin’ in the free world.

America how many times will you turn your head and pretend you just don’t see?

America the answer is blowing in the wind.

Easy Rider.

Freedom Writer.

America I found Forrester and he’s pissed

because nobody remembers his book

because you took all the books out all the libraries and you closed the libraries.

America for a fisher of men you’ve thrown many of us back.

America this is the view through Garry Gilmour’s eyes.

America is it becoming clear?

I didn’t say anything America.

...Nevermind.

One Morning in September

2011-09-11T12:40:00.002-04:00

The first thing that people noticed was how low the plane was flying, and then how fast. Every news crew in the country had their cameras pointing at the already smoking North Tower. Sirens bounced off the exteriors of the buildings lining Wall Street, the sounds of people expressing their shock and awe became almost ambient noise as panic and uncertainly began to take hold of the fearful people scattering on the streets below. Many watched the destruction through the lenses of their video cameras, unsure of what they were seeing unfold, but certain they would want to remember.

The nation was watching and wondering why these two staples of the New York City skyline were being attacked. Thick black smoke continued to escape through the sides of the North Tower. Cameras rolling. People running away from the building but unable to take their eyes of off it. A city of Salems and Lots looking back and running scared. Then the cameras saw the plane and it hung low in the sky, too low in the sky, and was blasting through the air with speed. People would note the roar of the engine screaming mere meters above their heads. Police and fire crews responding. The authorities begin to climb the stairs.

Five hundred yards away from the North Tower, Ben is watching through his camera lens at the surprising and paralyzing moment thrust upon his morning view. Ben was thirty-five stories up and like many in high rises that morning, was wondering if his building was next. With a shaky hand, he panned his camera across the large smoking hole in the North Tower, followed the trails of smoke up toward where it collected and formed a giant blur at the roof. Smoke pouring out the windows, smoke pouring out over the Hudson River. The practicing New York Giants saw the smoke rising from lower Manhattan and with the same curiosity as Ben, some of them grabbed their cameras and began to tape whatever was happening. Every movie camera in the tri-state area was trying to get this on tape. Spectacle doesn’t quite say it. The second plane was flying low in the sky. Air traffic controllers watched helplessly as the plane abandoned its flight plan right before their eyes.

In the clarity of hindsight you would have thought more people in the towers would have brought parachutes with them to work especially those who worked on the upper floors. Instead of watching helplessly as people flung themselves to their deaths to escape the smoke and flames, Ben’s camera would have seen a rainbow of parachutes blossom through the smoky sky, navigating their wearer’s way to safety.

Instead there were arms waving white flags and people desperately gesticulating in a vain attempt to call the world’s attention to the people still trapped inside. There were arms flailing and legs kicking out for the support that wasn’t there. There were bodies that sounded like sacks of cement when they hit the earth.

The streets were frantic. Police, Fire, EMS workers scrambled to assist. Smoke pouring out over the Hudson, blurring the eyes of Lady Liberty. People screaming. People standing with their mouths agape hoping the right words to say would crawl voluntarily from their mouths so they wouldn’t have to think.

A blur of cellular phones pointed at the smoking North Tower.

The plane was closing in. Faster. Roaring. Thunder sweeps across the streets of lower Manhattan mixing with the whirlpool of sirens, horns, screams and camera flashes. Annie Leibowitz aims her camera through the windows of her twenty-third street loft. Pictures go in her book of significance.

A man on the one hundredth floor has stopped waving his flag. He looks through the smoke and sees his children and the life they would go on to have without him. Below the people look like ants scrambling away from an unwanted footstep, scrambling for safety, scrambling to heal. Scrambling. His shadow grew as he approached the sidewalk.

Planes in the sky check in with the towers. The men in charge of national air traffic scratch their heads when repeated communication with United 93 go unanswered. Clear skies all across the country today. Nothing to worry about. Boss Man’s famous last words as he left the control room for the coffee room. Coming back to a view to chaos. The world imploding. Plane flies low. Roars. Screams. Bulge of orange flames appears a second after. A firey hole punched in the steel and glass skyline. Clear blue skies. Nothing to worry about. Smoke columns visible from outer space. Masking liberty island.

Twin Towers are burning like candles on the birthday cake of a new world priority. Beware. My suitcase means something to you. You should find my stare menacing. Why are you ignoring me? You won’t be doing that for long.

The towers burn like candles.For an hour the Towers burn and Ben’s camera records the entire thing. The sirens, the screams, the running, the yelling, the heroes, the collapse.

A people’s redemption in the hands of the heroes who crawled through rubble and pulled out angels. The shadow of a solitary fireman quietly taking stock in silhouette becomes a symbol of recovery efforts to rise again. Falling Man frozen in the shutter of a stranger becomes the symbol of the thousands missing, and efforts to name those without names.

About Gravity

2011-08-26T19:52:00.001-04:00

I built the city when I first laid eyes upon it.

I made this chair when I sat down on it.

I killed you when I saw you already lifeless in the grass

beneath the apple tree that taught me about gravity.

Paint a rainbow when you opened my eyes.

Walked through the rest of my life expecting a big surprise.

Fell through the traps I found in picture frames.

Became the catalyst to my own decay.

I saw hellos when I first heard your good-byes.

Felt the tears of my laughter and the joys of my sorrow.

Shut my mouth and watched my open palm shake while it did the talking.

I do my best running when I'm faced with walking.

Bum a cigarette from a stranger,tell a line to feed a friend.

I saw a tall tree, you saw the opportunity to fall.

You dressed for winter like you didn't notice the summer at all.

We built this island when we stopped to see the sea.

Right in front of us while we slept way up in the apple tree

that taught us about gravity.

Thoughts on Music and Writing

2011-03-07T21:10:00.004-05:00

My relationship with music is the same as everybody else's: it puts me into a certain mood, it gets me out of certain moods, it's the soundtrack to my workouts at the gym and when I'm running along the canal under the watchful eyes of trees robust with summer leaves. When I hear a good piece of music, its brilliance will fester inside me for a while and I imagine the composer toiling away at a piano, or a guitar, or one of the woodwinds, trying to put down on the page what they hear in their heads so they can share their work and others can learn.

The first time I remember watching someone play a musical instrument, I was probably three or four. It was my grandfather, which is to say my mother's father. He played the banjo, and he still does. My siblings and I can look back upon our memories at their cottage and hear him pluck those strings and play those scales.

When I was ten, he bought me my first guitar. I had been doing a little work as a paper delivery person - pretty standard for a pre-teen - and my grandfather told me that when I had saved one hundred and fifty dollars, he'd take me to the music shop and we would pick out a guitar. About two months later - and after a few youth-driving impulse purchases - I had saved the one-fifty, and like he said, my grandfather took me to the music shop.

It's almost twenty-years later, and I'm still playing the guitar. But the role of music - or perhaps more accurately, my playing music - has taken on something of a different purpose in my life. During university, I started reading and then writing with increasing frequency. Each summer I would read what I considered to be classics, and this in turn made me want to write.

Writers do all sorts of things when they write, and they have all sorts of rituals and things they do to keep moments of inspiration on the horizon, get them through a tough place in a novel, or whatever the case may be. One of my favourite writers, James Frey, has said that listening to music while he's thinking and writing dialogue, helps him to write dialogue in a more authentic way. Other's like Joyce Carole Oates, turn instead to physical exercise like running when they are working out plots lines or characters or whatever, in their head. In the case of Oates, she maintains that doing something methodical can be creatively restorative - and if you're lucky, something inspirational may trigger your writing hand along the way!

What I like to do is something of a mixture, in concept at least, as it doesn't involving running. Whenever I'm working out a problem or am aimless as to where I want my story to go, I grab my guitar and start playing chords. What's funny is that most times, I play the same pattern of chords over and over and over again, until I either relent to the increasing feeling that this work is lost for the night, it's gone out to sea...or until I figure it out and get going again. The words land safely on the page and nobody gets hurt.

There's just something about those beats, those sounds that clear my head and give me the proper head space to think about my story. But that's just my jive!

Drive-by Love, part three: playing by the rules

2011-02-02T17:26:00.004-05:00

First date goes down at her place. Cool. Don't they usually happen at some bar with a one-word name?

They've spent the better part of the week "talking" via "instant message service of the moment". He thinks her conversational style is weird; she doesn't write that much, or respond with any sense of urgency. Sometimes an entire sleep cycle passes and he'll wake up to a message. She makes him laugh though. Asks her out. She responds with the question: "Are you ready for this jelly?" Hahahahaha....smily face. He saw the pictures of her though, there's no jelly.

Things he knows about her: beautiful, moved from Northern Ontario three years ago, likes beer (the seeds of "maybe too much" were planted in his head at that moment), she's very active, and she has a dog named Stanley. He looks at her profile picture while he waits for her reply. He's tired but doesn't want to put the phone down. She's wandering around a casino with a drink in her hand and her blackberry on vibrate buried in the abyss of her purse. He's on his couch reading and glancing at his phone. Calm down man. Don't watch the pot. Seriously. Relax, the red light will flash. Plus, you'll hear the noise. If it's quiet, then she's not paying any attention to you right now. This is where he begins to wonder if she's really into him or not.

He figures, maybe too simplistically, that, if you're interested in the person, you're calling them back. Even if you have the urge to talk to her so bad that you have to put the phone on mute and ask her to tell you a story, partly so you can hear her voice, but also so she didn't figure out that you're sitting on the toilet. She'd never understand that sort of impulse. He's been trained to think that men and women approach this stuff differently.

They talk through the night. End up falling asleep beside their respective phones. Next day she says good morning and apologies for falling asleep. He say's no worries. Asks so when are we getting together. She says how about tomorrow? That's cool with him, besides, give him time to rent that movie he told her about. Downloading didn't work, too slow.

It's the first time he's walked to a girl's house with a video rental tucked under his arm since high school. Oh memory lane. Thinks it's cool that the first date is going down at her house. She casually responding: Where and when? and Your place or mine? Seemed pretty open-minded. Of course he suggests her place. Knows she lives alone. Well, her dog is there, but no other people. It's on a big street so he checks the address on the internet as he's getting ready. Enters her address, then enters his. Clicks "get directions" and waits a few seconds. Bam. Hey, she's so close. He smiles because he's averted the possibility of paying for a taxi. That's so cool, she's in my neighbourhood. Awesome. He leaves his house with a smile on his face. Thinks he'll stop and get a bottle of wine. Doesn't know what she prefers, but everybody likes red.

Walks, bottle of wine in hand, up the street to her's and makes a left turn. Heading toward the canal now. Slowly the apartment buildings and offices complexes give way to the brownstones of an Ottawa long gone. Back when the houses were built with care, good materials, a greater sense of craftsmanship. Ever seen a stained-glass window on a mobile home? By the address she gave, number "three", he figured she lived in one of those three storey jobs that had been divided into three single apartments. So common in this area. Rare nowadays to see a big house for a single family down here. Anyway. Past Cartier. Almost at Queen Elisabeth Drive. Third house from the corner. Apartment three. Takes a breath and rings the door bell.

Sounds of a dog barking leak through the door. Followed closely by footsteps down a steep stairwell and the smile of a beautiful women. Hi. It's her. She's holding Stanley. The dog. Go figure. He's a yapping little shit of a boston terrier, he's in fashion though, dressed in a sort of winter coat for dogs. She says he doesn't like the cold. Says he's soft like velvet. Pet him. He does. Agrees. Fucking dog is soft. She says come on up and he follows her. He takes the opportunity to check her out and he's happy because she's so fit. Loves a fit girl. Who doesn't, really? She wore black tights with a dress shirt and a scarf tied around her waist. She stands before him as he closes her door in a pair of thick wool socks pulled up to her knees. She looks cute as hell. In a messy way.

Tries to show that he hasn't already formed an opinion about her boobs. He totally has though. Are you kidding me? Poker face registers in a pasted on smile that he can't tare off. Looks into her eyes when she talks. Then at her cheek bones. Then at her hair. Then...then...

Nice place. Taupe walls. White moldings. She hangs his coat then they walk into the kitchen. She's already drinking wine. He'll just have what he's having. Puts the bottle he brought off to the side for now. Maybe they'll get to it later. Leans up against the counter while she's pouring wine and they make conversation. Good day today? Blah. Blah. Blah. Then he asks what she does for a living. I'm a cop, she says. Cool, he responds (maybe a little too eagerly, he might already be thinking about her handcuffs). Really, she asks. Yeah, he confirms. Because a lot of guys don't seem cool with that. They usually don't sound like they think it's cool, anyway. No, it is. In his mind, he's going, okay...good thing I didn't bring that joint with me. She's a cop, eh? Well, that explains the shape she's in. Fit. Fit. Fit. She smells like yoga for christ's sake.

They go into the living room. He looks at the all the precise decor. Glass table and four neatly arranged chairs. Perfect picture frames. Even a goddamn mantel. Place is beautiful. He tells her this twice in the first half hour. Feels stupid after the second time. She brings crackers and dip and they drink their wine and get to know each other. They're sitting on her love seat. The dog, for now, is sitting on the other couch. He's chewing a bone or something.

They turn the movie on and settle into the couch to watch it. He's thinking this is good because their elbows are touching. First contact. Cool. She's not huddled in the corner of the couch with her arms up, as if on guard. She turns around for her wine glass but then settles back down closer to him each time. Their hips are touching now. He puts his feet up on the table.

Bad move. Not because she doesn't like feet on the table, but because the dog then thinks it's his cue to sit on his out-stretched legs. It was not a cue. They were getting close. From where he sat the dog was just fine sitting on the other couch licking his balls or whatever. Not now though. Now the dog is sprawled out on his legs. But then begins to get up and relocate to a position that really isn't, between them. Hips move apart. Contact aborted.

She apologies and and says he just loves men. Especially her brother. Sorry. Sorry. He's being a little snot tonight. He hasn't seen my brother in a really long time. He's okay with it at first. Because the dog is cute and it hasn't forced her away from him completely. Elbows begin to rub together again after a few minutes. Then dog starts to move again. Back and forth, stepping on his crotch. Not the attention he was hoping for. Thing dog is a pain in the ass. Pain in the ass. Pain in the ass and a total cock-blocker. What did I do to you? Relax man, can't hit her dog. She'll throw you out. Plus she's a cop. So she'll kick your ass and then throw you out.

For the rest of the night it's follow the rules. Pretend to like the dog. Pretend to like the dog. Don't hit the fucking dog that's ruining everything right now. Leave the dog alone.

Note: no dogs were harmed during the date depicted. Seriously.

Drive-by Love, part two: the games

2011-01-30T15:05:00.007-05:00

We're going to meet and it's going to be great. Hopefully. May be dwelling a little too much on the question, what's worse on a first date: no physical attraction, or nothing to talk about?

It's all a game, isn't? Just a loose, undefined list of rules that aren't written down anywhere, but seem to appear whenever two people make each other feel "funny". Don't send another email. Wait. Don't seem too eager. It's exactly the type of self-consciousness you feel when somebody's about to take your picture. How desperate will this make me look? You have to wait. If you get her number in a bar, wait three days, then call. NO. She won't call you first. Well, maybe. But don't count on it. Wait. Then call. If you like her, wait three days to tell her.

Games change over time. Or maybe it's just what you stand to win, that changes. Playing cards used to remind me of trying to glean the finer points of euchre from my grandparents while watching them play at the cottage. Then it became playing games like "speed" and "asshole" with the cute girls who came to the place next door from ours. There we'd be, hiding from our parents in the woodshed - the sounds of our laughter and reckless abandon leaking through the walls, giving us away every time. What are you kids up to? Nothing. Just playing cards. Adolescence changed the nature of the game. Don't 'go swimming', go skinny-dipping! You follow?

They're having dinner. He suggested the place. She suggested the time. After work means he'll look extra kick-ass because he wears a suit. She's effortless and doesn't worry about it. New restaurant. He's been here before, for wine but not for food. She's been meaning to try it. Little plates. Meant for sharing. Weird combinations. Menu changes every week. He walks to the place, confidence growing with every step. Pictures her smile from the profile pick as he walks. Almost walks into moving traffic. Steady. Runs through a mental note of shared characteristics he's saved up. Talk to her about the theatre. Talk to her about politics. Talk to her about writing. Don't talk too much. Don't bore her into a stupor so that you have to pick her face out of the soup bowl. Checks his phone. Plenty of time. Shit, might be a little early. Pictures himself sitting alone waiting for her to join. Candle light for company. Waitress bringing water for conversation. Paces outside the place for several minutes before deciding it's cold enough to wait inside. Heads inside. Hostess looks at him. Takes his coat. It's one of those places. Follows Hostess upstairs. Minimalist atmosphere. Chairs and tables look back-breakingly modern. Two rows of diners jammed together. We're all listening to your first date conversation. HA!

Sits. Waits. Checks emails while he waits. Painfully typical. Waitress brings water. Yes, he's waiting for another person. Reservations in my name. Does she know my last name? My first name is too common. Shit. Didn't give her my last name. Waits. Sips water. Waits. Knows she looks beautiful but this is the part where he wonders if that's actually her in the picture or not. Because you hear all kinds of stories. That's actually my cousin. Yeah, that's me...five years and a hundred pounds less ago. No. It's her. She sounded hot in her text messages.

Drinks a glass of water. Then another. Kind of has to pee. Can't get up though. What if she comes by and I'm not here? She'll think I left or something. Calm down. And try not to ring your bladder out all over this chair. (That would be something of an introduction. Yeah, hey, I was just in the middle of pissing myself...how are you? Extend your hand out of routine, ignorant to the piss that's dripping from your fingers.) Relax, bud. It's really just the condensation from the glass of water you've been cupping for the last five minutes. Sits. Waits. Should have got a hair cut. Damn. This is like a job interview. Hi, so you got my add for a boyfriend. Do you have any references? Sits. Waits. Three cleansing breathes. One...two...

Hi. He gets up as she's making her way through the crowd. Last cleansing breath aborted.

She sits down. They sit down. She slides off her coat. He can't wipe the smile off of his face. She is pretty. She looks up at him. They both smile. He speaks first. So how are you? Good, glad to be out of the office. Me too. So you've never been here before. Blah. Blah. Blah. No. Haven't eaten the food, no. Drank the wine though. Speaking of wine. Yes. Drink menu. They peruse in silence. Subtle glances over the menu say smiles. Nice to finally meet you in person, he says. Yeah, you too, she agrees. And now the people at the table next to them can see this is a first date going down. (They stay for dessert.)

They order wine. He a red. She a white. First nothing-to-say look around the room occurs. All the fancy people. Restaurant policy is wear a uniform. He just looks at her and smiles. She always seems to smile back. What else can you do? Wink? No, that would be weird. They get the wine and spend a few minutes talking about wine. They look at the menus and spend a few minutes talking about the food. They put what with what? Really? Sounds weird. NO. It's trendy. OH. Okay.

They order something they can share. Then look into their wine glasses with despair.

Then he asks for her thoughts on online dating. So stupid. Says she's on there too so she can't really knock it. He agrees. Drinks more wine. She looks bored and he's recently found out that he has nothing to say. The food comes, they eat it. More wine comes, they drink it.

She asks for a refill and he pours her more. Wishing there was more than just the bottle between them.

~ to be continued ~

Drive-by love: part one

2011-01-27T13:38:00.008-05:00

In the beginning there were butterflies in the stomachs of all the girls next door, a sense of conquest and adventure in the eyes of the boys - a curiousity, really. I remember it well, all the first times when you lay eyes on a person and something in your chemistry changes and now you don't look at her the same way anymore and thoughts of spending another day apart begin to tare you like a flag in the wind.

The moments that give you pause and take you back to a room where the sight of each other's faces seemed to part a sea people, a feeling like you're the only two people on the planet right here, this moment begins to snowball down a mountain and it gets bigger and bigger and once it roles through town nobodies lives will ever be the same. Everything thereafter becomes an I've-got-to-see-you moment, and you find yourself sprinting to her apartment through the rain to feel her place a hand on your face. The appearance of a toga and gold leaf crown not uncanny in the least.

Now, though, it was hitting the refresh page while staring at a computer screen waiting to see if there's a message, or if somebody new came to visit your profile. Sort of like drive-by love: your eyes cruise across the pages of the profile, you look at all the words in the tiny boxes and you get hooked on something. You continue to read the profile. When you finish, maybe you read it a second time, to see if there's something you missed. For some reason you choose to focus on the fact that she apparently "owns cats", which make you have asthmatic reactions requiring rapid self-medication. Easy tiger. You're just saying hello. Think of something to say. Does she have pictures of herself? She does. How many? Four, nice. Oh, she looks awesome in this one. Man, this chick is the hottest f*#king girl I've ever seen in my life!

Look at her pictures.

Think of something to say.

Look at her pictures, again.

Think of something to say.

What to say?

Everybody says that online dating cuts through the bullshit, and gets the asses of the lonely into the chairs of coffee houses and pubs all across this fair city. People are more easy going on the internet. Look, buddy, we're all here for a reason. Sure.

That may be true. People are always telling me about some friends they know who hooked up and hit it off right away. After listening to this sort of talk for a while, you naively form the opinion that people on the internet will actually be as open-minded as their search for a partner appears to be. They will want to meet.

The meeting places. It's always someplace neutral, like a coffee shop, or some casual dining affair a couples steps away from hotdog vendor. Some place mutually comfortable where the ambient noise is dialed down enough to hear the other person speak. So you can nod along, letting out a few "yeahs" in a half-hearted attempt to communicate that you're actually listening and not wondering if you can look at her tits during the time it takes her to blink. This way to the gentlemen's room.

Sometimes a month's worth of emails. She takes her time to reply, it seems. You reply right away. Doesn't that make me seem a little too...eager? Whatever, first introductions are always awkward, it's the impression they cause that sometimes sticks in a bad way.

Here's the story. She was twenty-two and he was twenty-seven. She was in school, he was in limbo. He knew this, she did not. Not yet. He'd wait and see what happens first before he lets her know just how pathetic he really is. They spent the first two days sending instant messages to each other, flirty, but not obnoxiously so.

He then asked if she had plans that night. Her disclosure that she was staying in tonight made him smile the smile of an opportunist. Suggested drinks. She lived sort of in the west end, he lived definitely downtown. Give me an hour, he said. She was down. Just a walk down the street from her place. Said she'd wait for him outside. Cool. He changed his shirt, splashed his face with cologne, and called a cab from his BlackBerry while waiting for the elevator. It's an apartment. He'll be downstairs. Five to twenty-minutes. Plenty of time. He didn't want to smell like smoke for the first meeting, but he was getting anxious and was pacing the handicap ramp, so he decided to give into the tug of self-medication. Flick. Light. Breathe deep and relax. Checked his phone, he called the taxi almost twenty minutes ago. Still not here. He'd better send her a text letting her know that he'll be a bit late, waiting for the cab. So sorry. Send. Inhales pathologically for the next several minutes. Checks the time on his phone like he's expecting a bomb to detonate somewhere nearby. Stares down the street. Empty. Looks for cars with white lights on the roofs. Walks down to the other intersection, parked cars line the street but no taxis. No taxis. This is a first date for Christ's sake. Wow this looks bad. I'd better text her again. Hey, still no taxi, I'm gonna walk up to Bank and see what happens. Be there soon. Send. She replies. Sure, sure. You're probably just ditching me. Huh? No way. Panics. Words rush to his mouth and once and stumble into each other. Comes out squished. Drops his phone. Landed on the top of his shoe, so no worries. Hey, I'm coming, I really am. Don't leave. She writes back, you've got another half-hour. Okay. Send.

Keeping the girl waiting. Not the fake-out game to play when meeting her for the first time. No. But there she was leaning against the building wrapped tightly in a winter coat as it was unseasonably cold that night. Snowing a little. There she stood. I told you I was coming. Again, really sorry about the wait. I guess my apartment is in a taxi black-hole or something. No worries. Cute smile. Ended up having a great time with her. Talked for three hours and a couple of cocktails each. Nice girl. He walked her home and they smiled at each other when they parted. That could have been really bad, he thought. Still reeling from the late taxi pickup. Oh well. The next day she texted him.

Another time there was this forty-something woman. Looked nice in her profile pick so he send her a message. Over the summer. To his surprise she writes back right away. Teacher, so, I'm off during the summer. Must be nice. Secretly unemployed. Describes it as vacation instead. They talk, they talk, they talk. She's from Montreal though. He's in Ottawa. Shitty. They get along right away and bond over a mutual love of running and hiking. She's in great shape, has the legs and ass of a woman half her age. Nice. Running, hello. Gotcha. She's going hiking the next day. For some reason asks him to come along. Yeah, he can get there by 7am. She'll pick him up at the bus station. Cool. All in one day. Sort of weird. But, whatever. She feels taken aback by her own impulse and he asks if she'd like to call him so they could actually talk. Yeah, that'd be good. Yeah. Here, that's my cell. She calls they talk. Tells him that she never does anything like this. He says, ah, it's going to be fun. Then she asks him. Are you a serial killer? He laughs. No, are you? They laugh. He tells her to relax, people say I'm disarming by natural and I've always considered myself an extremely non-violent fellow. Seriously, no worries. Good. Because I have two kids and they need me. I would think. Don't worry. We'll have fun, and you'll remain alive.

Wow. Really? A non-violent pact before a date. This was truly the first of its kind in his experience anyway. What sort of men had this girl been seeing before? What sort of dates were they going on? Yikes. Then again, maybe it wasn't all that weird. Girl tells me that her friends shamed her for deleting her profile. Tells them why, though. Too many messages. Hey baby, this and that. Pictures of...well, you know. Gawd. Tells them that she'd receive one hundred a day, easily. Friends don't believe her. No way. Not because she isn't pretty, just, no way that many messages. Oh yeah, she says. Watch this. Fakes a profile. Leaves the boxes blank, just a name. Not even a picture. Gives the girls a copy of the password so they can check it out for themselves. So they can watch the progress.

Not even three hours later. Twelve messages.

~to be continued~

Stale Bread

2011-01-02T15:29:00.002-05:00

A loaf of stale bread under my head,

killer instinct in my eye but I don't bite,

you know why? cause it's suffocating quietly inside.

The second that it breathes, it opens its eyes, to their surprise,

a jack in the box with a fully automatic inside,

pull this car over, get the kids off of the ride,

they don't show it with their eyes, but they know a truth from a lie.

An intergenerational game of monkey see, monkey do...

do as I say my lit' homey, but not as I do,

a lot easier to say when you don't see the

three fingers pointing back at you.

I've got some of the answers, but I keep finding clues.

I used to wear this life like a costume, now it's a second skin.

Some clothes you wear start to wear you,

you're the first to hope you win, and the last to see you lose.

Go to church and you can learn about sinners and saints,

go to confession anonymous and you can lodge your complaints,

my angel in the mail came with a demon inside...

a full metal jacket against the skin of my pretty young bride.

The inside is what's real and the outside is fake,

don't' be Bart Simpson reaching for the electric cupcake.

Can't fix a broken home with a sludge hammer,

can't win the game throwing TD passes to Quintin Jammer.

It's hard to get on the right track without a ticket to ride,

it's tough to find the inner beauty when you're dying inside.

Swans

2010-12-31T19:52:00.005-05:00

I'm looking out across a sea of placated faces,

wondering how much damage time really erases.

Can I open a window in the room to vent some of this gloom,

the built up ambient noise, a home devoid of little joys.

Your silence is more telling than anything you really say

you walked away, never come again to stay, maybe to play, but not today.

But I want my shadow back, somebody to walk beside me

somebody to help me pick up the slack.

push our toes threw the sand on a beach in the promised land.

This auditorium my last stand,

won't you sit down there and keep your eyes on me?

the last desperate act of a guilty man tryin' a be free.

A bird in cage is always aware of its clipped wings,

a picture's worth a thousand different things,

it's just some guy on a cross, three days for the loss,

angel man in the cave's the boss.

Tellin' you why the rock was rolled back,

turn around to the see their tracks.

Can catch up to 'em too, just need to count to twelve,

in the library of the soul pulling tears off the shelves.

Always on my feet, I'm quick like a cat,

but if I had nine lives, why did I use 'em like that.

I'm in the middle of my own civil war, new streets but I've been here before.

Take the fork in the road, a needle in the weather vain

there's no shame in coming clean out of the shower.

Get my back for an hour, just let me fall

asleep in your gaze,

just got up and told 'em my name,

there's no praise to give because it won't be true.

And I could die in this bed lookin' back up to see you.

There's my life and my name and I'm waring 'em out,

Somethin' deep inside's finding its way to the door,

I managed to find from the floor.

Lemme have just five minutes more.

Got me a list of names who've been good to my bad,

time to fix it by sending sorries out into the dark night.

In any light, this wasn't right,

feed me tomorrow and I won't bite.

Just want you to know that I mean it,

so you can just sit back and glean it from my smile

that I smile when I'm looking at you,

from the rays of light from my brain when I'm thinkin' bout you.

Just one more chance to make it right, just sit tight,

28 days and a couple of nights.

The past is gory, got no glory,

featured voice in a broken toy storey.

Gotta get down off this wall, walk threw the mall.

Just a clear window between you and your dreams, it seems.

I placed a bet on the high of my lowest regret,

it fell on red but my wager was security set.

Walk me out to the street, call me a cab,

the last stab,

in the guts with this shaky microphone,

Are there anybody's lights on at home?

where I return alone.

Knowledge & Expression

2010-12-28T22:02:00.003-05:00

A question was posed to me recently, and I answered what I thought was a good answer, but the substance of it began to fester. The question was, "Which do you think is life's ultimate pursuit: knowledge, or expression?" I ignored the fact that my options were so strictly limited in this sort of black and white sense, and thought about it for a while.

I answered, both, but my answer was not a product of indecision. I couldn't decide between knowledge or expression for the simple reason that they are linked in principle. It's knowing what to say and how to say it. The who, where, when questions add personality, reason, and objective to what we say and are made significant by how we say it.

The interconnection between knowledge and expression is particularly telling in writing. A writer's quest to find their own "voice" is a combination of knowledge acquired and expression learned. To stand out in a world filled with writers takes various paths of self-exploration, experimentation, if you like, and practice to find the modes of expression that does justice to an individuals experience with the world.

In this sense, the more you find out about yourself - the thoughts you're willing to write down, the areas of society you're willing to explore - the more knowledge you acquire. Taking the time to think about them and allowing for the time to practice writing allows a writer to access their truest voice, or style of expression.

Artists Inspire Artists: A note on the Paris Review Interviews

2010-12-20T13:41:00.004-05:00

Once upon a day a few years ago, I was walking through my local bookstore with no particular destination in mind when I stumbled past a section of anthologies. There were short story collections, books of literary criticism, essay collections by John Updike and Susan Orlean, and books about theory and why writers write. I stood in front of the shelf for several minutes judging the books by their covers. Then I saw a book with the title The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. I, written across its bright yellow cover.

Taking the book off of the shelf and turning it over, I noticed a quote from Ernest Hemingway that read, "I have all the copies of The Paris Review and like the interviews very much. They will make a good book when collected and that will be very good for the Review." There were also included, quotes from several other established literary bright lights such as Margaret Atwood, John Ashbery and Salmon Rushdie. Each praised the Review for it's famous and thorough interviews.

Flipping to the table of contents, I began reading names like Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Dorothy Parker, Joan Didion, and several others, each interviewed by the Review for their insights into the arts of fiction, non-fiction, journalism, poetry and drama.

Needless to say, I bought the book and quickly became engrossed by its content. Each interview began with a short description of the setting of the interview: sometimes an office, a living room, hotel room, or restaurant, all describing the creative environment of the artists.

Reading these interviews provides one with a look into the creative engines that drive these artists, and the idiosyncrasies that keep them on track. And their methods are as diverse as the writers themselves.

For example, while Hemingway liked to write standing up, Truman Capote liked to lie down. While Annie Proulx begins composing in long-hand, she moves to the computer midway through; and Gay Talese uses shirt cards from the dry cleaners for taking notes on his subjects.

Kurt Vonnegut recounted how film adaptations (in his case for Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night) were a welcome source of financial stability to the writer. Capote, recounted the abandonment of several short stories and even an entire novel because he didn't believe they would sell. Winner of six Oscars and recipient of the 1987 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, Billy Wilder, shared his thoughts on failure, by stating that:

"Sure, I've made blunders, for God's sake. Sometimes you lay an egg, and people will say, It was too early. Audiences weren't ready for it. Bullshit. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad. The tragedy of the picture maker, as opposed to the playwright, is that for the playwright the play debuts in Bedford, Massachusetts, and then you take it to Pittsburgh. If it stinks you bury it. If you examine the credits of Moss Hart or George Kaufman, no one ever brings up the play that bombed in the provinces and was buried after four shows.

"With a picture that doesn't work, no matter how stupid and how bad, they're still going to try to squeeze every single penny out of it. You go home one night and turn on the TV and suddenly, there on television, staring back at you, on prime time, that lousy picture, that thing, is back! We don't bury our dead; we keep them around smelling badly."

However funny or odd the interviews (and sometimes the interviewees) seem, a common point with all is the hard work ethic needed to create, and the discipline it takes to reach the visions of their perfection. Again, I turn to Hemingway (I'll admit a bias for his interview, as he is one of my favourite writers), who admitted to writing the last page of his classic A Farewell To Arms, a staggering 39 times, before he was satisfied. With each of the interviews, there is included a page of manuscript, of one form or another, by the writer, where one gets a flavour for their editing style. (As a person who grew up typing, I also get a kick out of seeing the fine examples of remarkable penmanship.) Kurt Vonnegut's example even came from an unpublished novel of his called Spit and Image. Since the author's recent death and publication of other previously unreleased material, might fans be treated with this unknown work in the future?

Whoever you decide to highlight, reading The Paris Review Interviews gives book lovers a window into the composition of those classic works we love. The interviews are a place where a fan might also discover habits in common with their favourite author.

Inspiration takes many and all forms. But I think a great source of excitement lies in reading the thoughts and views of the people who have helped shape literary hunger in this world.

An interviewee once told me that "art inspires art". And I couldn't agree more. But I would extend this by saying also that artists inspire artists.

Reading the Dictionary

2010-12-19T15:46:00.002-05:00

During university I had a political philosophy professor who stood before the class one day and asked, "Have you ever read the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) from cover to cover?"

It was a strange question because, as I thought anyway, aren't dictionaries something to be looked at when we forget how to spell something? Yeah, how do spell...look it up. The same with a Thesaurus. What's another word for....look it up. But then you put down the OED and never look at it again.

The professor's recommendation to us that day was simply that, "You should, it's remarkably interesting and entertaining!"

The interesting, I could see. Dictionaries, in a way, are the diary of languages, the way we track its past, present and ever-changing future. When somebody does something great (greatly evil, as you will find Hitler, Stalin and Pinochet's names; or just plain great like Tolstoy, Diana, Princess of Wales, et-cetera), their names are added to the OED.

In recent years this has been extended to consumer culture. Canadians will be pleased to know that if they are confused about what a "double-double" is, they can look it up in the Canadian OED. I'm sure in some American addition, one can find the hallmark of the original fast-food meal, the Big Mac.

When film and books began to be popularized by mass market PR strategies, making them available to global audiences, the word "blockbuster" was inserted and is defined informally as "a film or book with great commercial success." This was also extended to describe a person behind such great success, by calling them "superstars", and defining the term as "an extremely famous and successful performer or sports star." (Even animal noises are given a name and defined. Take for example, the "bleat" which is first defined as "a sheep or goat's weak or wavering cry.")

There are any number of examples where the changing nature of the English language has added to the content of the OED.

The entertaining, I can also understand, for the simple reason that some words or names are hilarious and given even funnier definitions. Take for example the "walrus moustache", a noun that describes a "long, thick, drooping moustache." (Along the lines of facial hair, maybe the term "Movember" might find its way in some day.)

How about "yippee", describing an "expression of wild excitement or delight." Canadians always love to point out the British influences on their lives, so in that spirit, consider the "yob" which is a British informal word describing a "rude or aggressive young man", or a "yobbo", which refers to a "yob".

The list goes on and on.

While the professor characterized the OED as an interesting and fascinating read, perhaps it is also a necessary read. How many times have you seen the wrong "your" or "you're", or "its" and "it's" or "they're", "their", and "there" used incorrectly? If you must, their definitions rather simply spell out their appropriate use, and they're found in the OED.

How many times have you had a conversation over Twitter or Facebook, and employed the letters "LMAO" or "LOL" to describe that you're "laughing your ass off" or that you just "laughed out loud"? How many times have you seen the aforementioned "your" simply written as "ur"?

Whether you view the OED as simply a reference tool, a vital reminder of the roots of the English language, as a source of entertaining and amusing words and definitions, or as a log meant to track the evolution of words and phrases, I would say that it is all of these things.

And definitely worth a read!

What I learned while writing a novel

2010-12-17T12:03:00.004-05:00

This past fall, after years of kicking around mere fragments of ideas in my head, I sat down in front of an old Smith/Corona typewriter and hunted and pecked and miss-typed my way to two hundred pages of manuscript. The typewriter had been bought at the Glebe Garage sale (an immensely popular annual purging of basements and crawl-spaces in one of Ottawa's oldest neighbourhoods) for $10 dollars, and given to me as a gift.

As writers know, there are as many ways and methods to approach writing a novel as there are novelists. And if you're honest with yourself, it is a process that you don't necessarily prefect, as methods of expression can change with age, as one acquires new perspectives. In any case, I began my journey baring two rules in mind: (1) write every day, whether one paragraph, an entire chapter, story arc, character introduction; and (2) finish each day knowing where to begin the next. Let's be honest, these two principles are very basic (and I stole the second rule from Hemingway! Paris Review interview lovers may note his 1958 sit-down with George Plimpton).

I chose to focus on these rules for the simple reason that they seem easy to follow, even when writing each day seems like a serious challenge. Allowing myself to be satisfied with whatever I had written on a particular day seemed to take the pressure off of trying to perform some Kerouacian feat of marathon spontaneity. It also allowed me to completely envision the world I was trying to describe before I approached the typewriter, if only one place at a time, one character at at time.

As this project was my first attempt at composing a novel, I also learned not only how to manage a creative schedule, but I also learned to pay close attention to the stuff of novels: people, places, objects, time of day, sounds, noise, the way people walk, the way people talk, how they hold their coffee cups or pens, and probably a million other things. I have always been a social person, but writing this novel heightened my awareness as to how much personal interaction goes a long way in creating moulds of character.

For me this meant turning off the iPod, turning off the BlackBerry, and opening my senses to the things going on around me, the smells in the air, sitting on the bus and not drowning out the ambient noise with the damn rap music, et-cetera. Letting go of various digital distractions through the writing process was vital in capturing the essence of place, setting, character. These may not be the things that drive a novel, but they are the blood and muscle that layers the skeleton of plot.

In the end it is about simplicity. For myself (and I didn't write this to sound like a garden Buddha passing out fortune cookie wisdom), ignoring the complexities of the world around me and paying more attention to the "little things", allowed me to find places where my characters could exist, and allowed me to give them traits that were relatable to others.

February's Song

2010-02-12T12:32:00.002-05:00

Only see your around at Christmas,
from the look on your face, I know you missed us.
But you look lost in the frozen faces of familiar picture frames.
Don't need to remember the dates and names,
and you can still find your fringerprints on the window panes.
Come back to me in footsteps through the snow.
Each crunch that you hear is another wall between us breaking down,
the sidewalks may look different but it's the same old town.
Take the ship out of the bottle and sail across the room,
you might find the record player's playing a new tune.

Learning how to stand

2010-01-22T10:15:00.001-05:00

Searching through the forest of my mind -
there's something I've lost, but don't want to find.
I wanna kneel amongst the trees, witness heaven on my knees -
and say something hot to this cool breeze.
Lose my footprints in the river trying to walk across the water;
change direction like a bird;
suck sun like a flower;
walk without a shadow and crawl away praying for a new day;
fall asleep beneath a rainbow, and wake up next to a pot of gold -
just give me another life to hold,
but this story's been sold.
Put down the brush and guide your colours with both hands,
you might fall amongst the rubble,
but you're learning how to stand.

This Blog's 4

2010-01-10T20:48:00.002-05:00

This blog's 4,

another year like the one before.

Many pass by without leaving a trace,

hard to find your footprints in this internet space.

Through travel,

through pain,

some sun,

some rain,

it's all here,

and it's not left-over.

No used tires,

or cliche clover.

In the eyes of the normal man,

his property is kingdom and he is king.

So here's my

something, nothing, everything.

a 2010

2010-01-01T14:36:00.002-05:00

A new birth in 2010;

the annual chance to begin again.

Slopping through snow, and ice and regrets...

take another opportunity to place your bets.

Some celebrate this day like the ones before,

some stay buried beneath the old war.

Between beginning and end we find ourselves today,

hoping for change that doesn't seem far away.

Undone

2009-11-25T21:10:00.001-05:00

Unclasp the watch to write this rhythm;

photos of another place and time ---

this reverie is both yours and mine.

Our interaction on the side-street knows,

that the cold of the winter-wind blows

your whispers past the tip of my nose,

as the sign flips from open to close;

and you stand under the shadow of your choosing,

and I crawl away a casualty of your musing.

victims of a fight where both are losing,

junk-sick from the drugs we're using.

Photos of another place and time ---

this life is both yours and mine.

Can't wash this feeling from my hand,

of being tucked away in a foreign land,

reduced to the occasional family pity- visit.

(Not our creation or is it?)

Splashes on the blank canvas,

old water in the empty vase;

footprints in the frozen grass,

tear-tracks down your tired face.

Inside the wooden crate wrapped in lace,

trinkets warn from use before,

we ignited a civil war.

You stand under the shadow of your choosing,

and I crawl away a casualty of your musing.

victims of a fight where both are losing,

junk-sick from the drugs we're using.

It was done before it was over,

fields of fire now filled with clover;

a reminder of peacefully counting sheep

under skies too beautiful to miss for sleep.

A memory for down-the-road to keep,

no battle could ever be had or won,

those days have past,

we've come undone.

Playboy Magazine: Playing nice on the coffee tables of mainstream

2009-11-21T11:14:00.006-05:00

It's been a theory of mine for a while that the once taboo men's magazine, Playboy, has shaken off its label as the bible of moral turpitude, to dawn the cloak of a respectful, mainstream avenue for literature, social commentary and critique.

This has happened for three reasons: the Internet has moved pornography away from still pictures and transformed that label to movies; the 'playboy' pose isn't something that's akin to pornography, but rather more closely relates to fine art, even promoting an almost overarching artistic merit. And lastly, its content has seen contributions from diverse sources such as stories by Margaret Atwood, to Marge Simpson as the newest cover model.

Hardly a surprise to the Internet-savvy, but people don't go to magazines anymore for 'the really good stuff.' NO. Save that for the plethora of websites that make you pass through a disclaimer screen asking you to make sure you're old enough to view the content. Nothing that anybody could put in a magazine could be as bad. More importantly, though, is the Internet has changed the medium of porn, replacing the once sought-after pictures with movies. (Note: pornography refers to how acts of a sexual nature are depicted, not actually the substance of what's being depicted.)

Second, the "Playboy" pose. I don't think high-gloss pictures of women posing in the country-side on fur blankets with elegant jewelry constitutes porn. The pictures look like fine art pictures, which do, by their very definition promote some sort of overarching artist merit. In a sense, these types of photos aren't about the women at all, but the quality of the photos. Real pornography has a grittiness to it that photo spreads in Playboy completely lack. The centerfolds look they've been touched up with an airbrush. That's fine, I think everyone knows about airbrushing by now, but the problem is the photos LOOK like they've been airbrushed. Polished is not pornography. If Playboy magazine were a girl, she'd be the type who wears makeup to the gym.

Above all, the content of the magazine promotes a more mainstream audience than say its traditional market penetration of the mid-40s white male. Many fine writers from Margaret Atwood to James Ellroy have published a story in Playboy: hardly headline writers for Penthouse.

In the end, Playboy has made a transition from the secret-porno-stash-closets of fathers, to the coffee tables of mainstream. Think I'm wrong, here's more proof. This past Friday I was in barber shop having my hair cut when I noticed the magazine rack. The two latest editions of Playboy magazine. Just sitting right there, in public. Not tucked away, out there where the world can see them. The part of this argument that makes it art is that this barber shop, is located in the basement of a government of Canada building.

No Access?

2009-11-18T15:45:00.001-05:00

The issue of transparency always manages to surface, in one form or another, in democratic societies. Our Access to Information Act makes it possible for ordinary citizens like you and I to request information from the Government of Canada, and receive a reply shortly thereafter.

Seems simple enough.

Really though, the Access to Information Act was not designed as a simple query and answer forum. Rather, this access to information system was put in place so that the government would have a legitimate way to say: NO.

Firstly, the Access to Information Act had to be written in the first place! If our government was concerned about how uninformed its citizens were, all information, from all ministries would be available, all the time. There would not be an Act that prescribes the procedures for filling out an access to information request form because there would not be a request form. There would not be timelines for answering requests and processes to follow because the only answer would be, yes.

Secondly, the Act itself includes a measure that ensures the public-at-large never fully understands what information is available. Section 10 (where access is refused), subsection 1, states that:

“Where the head of a government institution refuses to give access to a record requested under this Act or a part thereof, the head of the institution shall state in the notice given under paragraph 7(a): (a) that the record does not exist.”

Looks pretty straight-forward.

You make a request for access, you are denied, end of the story, right? Maybe not. Subsection 2 states that, “The head of a government institution may but is not required to indicate under subsection (1) whether a record exists.”

When your access to information request is denied – and you are supplied with the reason: the record does not exist – there is no way of knowing if that is in fact the case. This logic is the reason why the request is being denied access, but the head of the government institution is not required to provide proof.

Sounds like no access to me.

Broken

2009-11-16T14:38:00.001-05:00

This home is broken,
cut me open.
Give me an answer,
don't leave the cancer.

Liberal Homebase?

2009-11-10T09:13:00.003-05:00

Canada might be on the verge of conservative reign for years to come: of course only time will tell if that's true. For what it's worth, I'm starting to feel like the Progressive Conservatives after the 1993 election that returned only two Tories to Parliament Hill: gearing up for a long stay in Opposition territory.

In the face of yesterday's by-elections in British Columbia, Quebec and Nova Scotia, I am concerned for the fderal Liberals. In each of these by-elections, the Liberal candidate was not in the top two, rather, third. It's not only the finishing position that is cause for concern but that in each case, Liberals were severly trailing their competition in the number of votes. Using these numbers to project any type of outcome in a possible spring election, the results are less than desired.

One of the things I find uncanny about the Liberal party is how its own players (Parliamentarians and staffers) talk about their voters. When talking about the general public, they all seem to say the same thing: "We need to reach out to our base!"

I find this declaration interesting, and a little confusing because, there is no Grit base. For much of its ruling history, the Liberal Party of Canada has been a successful brokerage party, nothing else. It has been able to find success by pulling socially progressive voters away from the Tories, and has managed to make the argument that of the opposition parties, they'll be the ones to win power.

Not sure if that's true. If the recent elections in Canada have taught us anything, they have reminded us of the importance and necessity of a homebase. In this department, the Liberals seem out-gunned by the religous right and family values based voters of the CPC; the environmental activitist base of the Green Party; the Quebec Nationalist base of the Bloc Quebecois; and the socially progressive, workers-rights voters of the NDP.

So, when federal Liberals say, "we need to reach out to our base," who are they talking about? To be sure, the Liberal Party needs a real identity, not a stolen one, or a borrowed one. If the identity remains securely attached to being the middle of the road, then that's where they'll stay.

Thoughts on Concrete

2009-10-14T12:24:00.002-04:00

Masquerading in the mirror by the candlelight,

reveals the darker side of you.

Walking on the water instantly reveals,

the crippling weight of your concrete shoes.

Did you choose to wear that bruise?

Why would you wage a losing war?

Meet me outside the grocery store,

I always leave wanting more.

2009 Nobel Prize in Literature

2009-10-07T19:33:00.006-04:00

Yes, it's that time of year: the time when the secretive Swedes burst out and unmask the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. To be honest, I'm getting very tired of the European writers. When you consider that nine of the past ten winners have been from European countries, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it's time for a change.

People have been talking about the American writer, Philip Roth, but what about Thomas Pynchon? Albiet a recluse (I don't even think his publishers know his face!) Pynchon churns out a novel on an average of 9 nine years, but they are nonetheless worth the wait. If the Nobel Prize is a recognition of a lifetime's contribution to the cause of literature - and it is a cause - don't his books Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and most recently, Against the Day, put him at the top?

I ask you to consider Canada, who hasn't seen a winner (and 1976 winner Saul Bellow doesn't count. For one thing, he spent his entire writing life forcing his work on hapless undergrads at the University of Chicago; and for another, he renounced his Canadian citizenship!).

Hasn't Margaret Atwood produced a lifetime of amazing work? But don't stop there, consider Alice Munro. Sure her forte remains the short story, but the Nobel Lit prize doesn't have to be about novels. The mathematian Bertran Russell won it in 1950, and a Churchill named Winston in 1953. So it isn't just about books. Munro's stories portray characters with an array of intensions, desires, horrors, passions, and curiousities, and they are worthy. Sure she took herself out of the running for this year's Gillar Prize, but I think she'd make the trip to Sweden for a date with King Gustav!

Fine, don't consider fiction alone! Consider American historian Howard Zinn. A man of remarkable depth, vision, and clarity, a man who has seen war but advocates for peace and prosperity gives him credit. (What was that pioneering book he wrote, A People's History of the United States?)

The last North American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was Toni Morrison, for her novel, Beloved, but that was 1993!

Who's it going to be? Take a look at North America!!

List of soldiers' names grows longer

2009-09-20T16:23:00.004-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege to attend a memorial service - for the 24 Canadian victims of the 9-11 terrorist attacks - at Beechwood Cemetery, in Ottawa, Ontario. Earlier this year, an Act of Parliament made these grounds the National Military Cemetery of the Canadian Forces. (For those of you elsewhere in the world, these grounds represent the Canadian equivalent to the United States' Arlington National Cemetery.)

As my taxi turned into the east entrance and began meandering down the small asphalt street, eventually dropping me off near the Prime Minister's security detail, I began to notice many of Ottawa's great names carved on the tombstones.

The Prime Minister greeted all those in attendance - which included politicians, family members of the victims, and those of the soldiers fighting insurgencies in Afghanistan - with a speech, a moving tribute to the legacy of Canadian soldiers fighting for our freedom. (I stood behind the rows of chairs, and every once and a while, glanced over my shoulder to the rows and rows of military tombstones behind me, and I wondered about the last thing each of them saw before they died.)

After the Prime Minister's address, two family members of the victims of 9-11 - a boy and girl - came and read aloud the names of the 24 Canadians who died in New York that day. The audience was moved to tears when the little boy came to his uncle's name, choaked back tears, and read his name aloud through the stutters of broken English. The list took 5 minutes to read, but it felt like forever.

Following this, four people were invited up to read the names of every Canadian soldier killed in Canada's mission in Afghanistan - all 129 of them (at that point, the list is now 131 names long).

As each presenter stood and somberly made their way through their list of names, the world around us seemed to become snarled up in the canopy of trees, letting no evidence of life outside the cemetery encroach on the moment. The third presenter - a blond woman - began reading the names, but was overcome with grief when she presented her husband's name. At the same time a moving and miraculously human moment, for in that brief moment, we all wore her pain.

When the ceremony concluded, I found myself wondering through the rows of military tombstones, being careful of course, not to step too close. As I walked I began to think about the close to 15 minutes it took to read all 129 names aloud.

How long before that list takes 30 minutes to read? How long before it takes 45 minutes, and then one hour after that?

How many more rows of tombstones will I see next year?

Let the blank page tell the story

2009-08-12T20:15:00.003-04:00

Father sits at the desk,

wondering what to say to son.

The computer mimics

the blank expression on his face.

White screen.

Cursor blinks

like a light-house signaling

the fog of images

trapped in the night of his mind to safety.

Should he write in Ariel?

Would Times New Roman be too official?

Could he pull off an LOL in Bookman Old Style?

What the hell is Wing-Dings?

Shift, home-key, safe and sound.

And start again?

Or,

Alt-Control-Delete,

and let the blank page tell the story?

Neighbours & Fences

2009-07-21T11:04:00.004-04:00

If it's me, I'd like one more round
with the lights turned down,
and not a sound,
escaping our lips while we try to escape,
lying quietly
contemplating eternity
and what it means to be an open sore
weeping on the streets
of concrete jungles with nothing
but a paper cup, or an over-turned hat
collecting pity from the passers by.
They'd ask themselves why
doesn't he just move,
without stopping to ask him
why he's stopped.
If it's me, I'd call it like it is,
just another tragic game of
neighbours and fences.

Sarah Palin is a political jockey looking for a better horse

2009-07-04T11:52:00.003-04:00

If the way she carried herself in the 2008 presidential campaign wasn't evidence enough, Sarah Palin's recent announcement that she's stepping down to concentrate on a 2012 run for the nation's top job more than proves she's nothing more than a political jockey looking for a better horse.

All throughout the 2008 campaign - and this is all I'll mention because kicking a dead horse isn't fair - it seemed that Sarah Palin was confused as to which job she was on the ticket for. She was vying for Vice President, but President looked so much better. And the nation took the 'she's a heartbeat away from the Oval Office' seriously because John McCain's an old warhorse - whose probably more effective in Congress than in the White House, anyway - and looked like he was ready to keel over (sorry John).

I side with those who called her nomination for Vice President like it was, part symbolic gesture, part appearance-on-the-ticket-necessity. That was then.

In the end Sarah Palin is counting her chickens before they hatch. Leaving a Governorship merely 8 months after the last general election in order to place herself as the front runner is only a mechanism of distraction. The public has heard about misuse of Alaskan tax dollars, misuse of campaign funds, passing off complete ineptness as folksy, and of course, the Tina Fey skits.

By announcing this, Palin is attempting to polish her image in the eyes of the American people by projecting one of readiness, goal-oriented, and perhaps in her twisted logic, leadership. Will it work, not if Bobby Jindal has anything to say about it.

Campaign Talk

2009-07-04T11:43:00.002-04:00

Hi, I’m Jon Thomas, but some people call me Dick.

Dick?

As in Van Dyck --

Van Dyck, try as in Head.

They don’t talk about me behind my back do they?

Sir, not only do they talk about you behind your back, but they do it on television, on the radio, and, on the front page of my morning paper. Why are you talking to them, before talking to me?

You think I’m new at this? Don’t be stupid...this is my fifth trip around the sun.

Yeah? Well, you’ve been getting too familiar with the scenery.

I appreicate the enthusiam of the voters.

That’s nice...enthusiam...Stop taking in girls from the press gaggles.

Why?

Because somebody’s gonna notice, and they all have video cameras, and they all want to tell the public something they don’t know.

Are you pissed?

The veins of my forehead have turned into the mighty Colorado, what gave it away?

I’m telling you, you’re going to pass out. Your face is turning all red.

No it isn’t. Stop looking at it. Do I look over your shoulder while you’re trying to take a piss? Get off me...Jesus!

Listen, how bout we sit for a minute, eh. Maybe, grab a drink...calm down a little. You’re shaking.

It’ll go away.

Yeah, well so did my mother-in law, but she had to fall down a flight of stairs first.

Ouch.

Not that hard head. Damn she was an idiot.

No, sir, we’ve wandered far from the point.

Which was?

Stop saying ‘and some people call me Dick.’

I heard you, and I asked you why.

Because it makes people think about why some people would call you a dick, and we need people thinking you’re a hero. NOT a dick. Get it?

Yeah. I get it.

Jesus

I heard that.

If I didn’t mean you to, I would have said it quietly.

Success is all in the F**k-up: the Toxic Celebrity

2009-06-17T19:09:00.001-04:00

The real secret to success in the entertainment business isn't winning an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, or any other prize that marketers dream up to sell more dvds and movie contracts. The real secret to success isn't working hard with an acting coach or editor to achieve the big-time status most of us dream about.
The real secret to success is fucking it up royally. PS: if it's in the public eye, even better.

For the average person, if you mess up, you learn from it and move on. There's no big story here, nothing particularly alluring about falling off your bike while learning to ride it. You fall until you learn how to stand. However, if you're a Hollywood celebrity like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears, your train-wrecks draw people in. You keep the spotlight, people find you interesting.

Why? Because beautiful is boring, and completely alien to the bottomless-pit that is Ugly. One can only be so beautiful. People see billboard pictures, look back in amazement, but don't ask any more questions because it's just another beautiful person, up there, in Times Square (or where ever) being beautiful. The story is about as deep as a rain puddle. But Ugly. Ugly is like an onion: it has layers.

This is the real reason why people still give a shit about Lindsay Lohan, for example. She is as destructive as a hurricane, and in any other career won't be able to land a job. (Wait, she hasn't released a film since 2007.) The money most people want to spend on their dream-home, Ms. Lohan has spent on rehab. And yet, all around the world, people want to talk about her. Who she's sleeping with, who she's drinking with, what she drinks, how much she drinks, when she drinks, where she drinks, if she's sober, who she dates. None of this talk revolves around her career as an actress.

But enough dumping on Ms. Lohan, because, though it is fun, it's just too easy, and admittedly, a little unfair. My screw-ups aren't public.

The old adage in PR is that, "there's no such thing as bad press." When you consider that publishers and production companies go after people who are able to draw a crowd, and thus drive up sales, this is probably true. It seldom matters what the crowd looks like, or the demographic, so long as there are many, and they have money.
When Howard Stern started out on the airwaves, he was vulgar, he defied his bosses, he ignored the rules of broadcasting, but he was popular. Why? Because people couldn't wait to hear what he was going to say next. This helps explain the popularity of the 'toxic celebrity,' People want to see what they're going to do, say, throw, smash, snort, drink...next.

Toxic celebrities don't care about their career. They want to remain in the spot light, and the best way to do that, is keep the train-wrecks coming, and make them bigger and hair and panty-free, each time.

What The Bachelorette is Really all about

2009-06-09T18:26:00.003-04:00

Okay, I hate to admit this, but I've watched the last two episodes of the latest vomit-inducing installment of the 'reality' show, The Bachelorette. Starting off with twenty-five suitors to choose from, usually ranging in age from early 20s to mid 30s, this year's lady of the hour is Jillian Harris.

Ms. Harris, having had the unfortunate experience of being eliminated from the latest installment of that other show, The Bachelor, is now the center of attention. Each night, the men burn and pine and in the grandest of cliched gestures, compose half-assed ballads played underneath her window. She reaches for a tissue and cries, I reach for my bucket and vomit.

But enough of the hating.

After watching the show, I feel the need to inform Ms. Harris she's still second fiddle. But this time not to another woman, to a flower. Think I'm wrong? Watch the show for yourself. You can hear the guys during their retrospective interviews in between segments.

"I hope I get a rose."

"Who's going to get a rose tonight?"

"If I don't get a rose, I'm going to be pissed."

"If you're here for the wrong reasons, you don't deserve a rose."

Sorry Ms. Harris, it's all about the rose.

This is...

2009-05-29T15:02:00.004-04:00

This is the part where I hold my tongue.

This is the moment where I let the battle go unwon.

This is love but it feels like war.

Don't have the energy to pick my feet up off the floor.

This is the part where we make emends.

This is the moment where we quietly hold hands.

And stare at the icebergs as they filter down from the cold,

under the sun only to melt into the waters off the coast.

This is the part where we wonder if the ocean water's bored,

of constantly crashing on the rocks that won't have her,

still she keeps coming back for more.

This is the moment held with a tight squeeze.

This is the part where I can feel the weakness in your knees.

This is the moment where I realize that time has no reverse.

Precious memories pass me by in a black Cadillac hearse.

Is this just life, or part of the curse?

This is the part that makes life a never-ending story.

In America it's called a truck, and in England a lorey.

This is the moment of break-through in group therapy.

This is the part where life is grand.

This is the moment of the last stand.

Where we walk away and claim there's a difference we can see,

sometimes it's real, sometimes it's make-believe,

still this is the part where it gets to me.

This is the part with the tea party at the bottom of the pool.

This is the moment where you realize her new guy's a tool.

And you laugh yourself to sleep every night,

faux-boxing in the mirror drenched in new morning light,

this is the part where you understand that this won't make it right.

Your only enemy is yourself in this intra-ego fight.

This is the part where you draw a line in the sand.

This is the moment where dare cross the bridge to a new land.

This is the part where you join a band.

Five different people, but they all understand.

You quit the drugs but not the excuses,

this is the part where you realize confession is fucking useless.

This is the moment that does you wrong.

This is the part where you live the verse,

but not the chorus of the song.

'Jobs' or 'Careers'

2009-05-26T18:41:00.004-04:00

There are a few things that perpetually occupy the mind of a recent university graduate. The first is: how am I going to pay off all those loans? The second is, what I am going to do from 9-5? If you're anything like me, you have big plans, but don't quite know how to realize them. Or, perhaps more correctly, you don't understand how what you're currently doing (work wise) is going to get you there.

If you consulted career columns or books on this type of advice, they'd probably tell you what you must do in order to market yourself effectively. Their advice usually goes like this: put this on your cv; never put that on your cv. If you get an interview, play up how you can help the company, or organization achieve its goals: play down what you expect from the company or organization in return.

And for the most part this is solid advice.

However, after two years slumming in the post-graduate scene, I've come to understand that success in the working world is really just a frame of mind. Rather than focusing on what type of job or career you want, start focusing on whether you want a 'job', or a 'career.'

The way to begin is realizing that yes, there is a major difference between the two, and yes, having your mind on the 'job' track, or the 'career' track, can have an impact on the paths you take in your working life.

So what am I talking about?

A 'job' implies something to fill that space between 9-5. You don't necessarily take it home with you, and it isn't necessarily that difficult. (For you professionals already standing on firm ground in the working world, think about what you did in high school.) It fills your wallet to provide and pay the bills, but it isn't fulfilling. Now, this doesn't mean that it doesn't require an education, or thought to do. But generally speaking, this is a short term gig. Think about all the famous actors who had several odd 'jobs' during the early days. Jobs as I have defined them, aren't necessarily something you can directly build upon. However, and this is a big however, you can take the skills you learn, and apply them elsewhere. But they don't always help you plant your feet in a different area of the working world. 'Careers' on the other hand, are different.

If you are looking for a 'career', you're looking for something you can directly build upon. By that I mean you can keep working in the same area, but move on and often move up. Getting bigger contracts, working within a wider network. Go from regional to national. When you approach the working world in this way, looking for a 'career' can actually maximize your potential to achieve what you want to achieve, or change whatever it is you want to change. And you continue to build. This is the key difference between 'jobs' and 'careers'. The former may build your experience indirectly. But the latter will build it in a more direct way.

Approaching the work force with a 'career' in mind will help you quickly identify the occupations you want to avoid, and move you closer to getting on the road to success (my apologies for the unavoidable cliche).

Hope(full)

2009-04-21T20:46:00.004-04:00

The trouble with hope is that, sometimes, you think it's something that can be found at the burning tip of a cigarette, in the mystic vibrations of a body-buzz, or in a dried up lump of hard rock lined up on a fancy glass table in a hotel suit. But they say hope floats.

Humans do a bizarre many things in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure - rarely stopping to think about the traffic accident they're about to cause, until they cause it. Then you have to look back across the bloodied pavement, pick up your baggage, walk across the two-lane highway and stick your thumb out.

You could be broke, or divorced, or broke and about to get divorced, or you could be just another sinner begging whomever for just enough energy to make it through the day. This is the way most of us feel - we walk around all day, in our skin, praying that nobody will find out what really lies beneath this civil disguise.

Remember the stand-out, down-on-his luck guy on the bus. When everyone's holding their brief cases and coffee cups and are headed to work, he's the guy taking the bus to a different corner because the cops told him to leave and the shop-owners told him to get his ass of their property. It isn't nice, but it's real. You could lie to yourself and pretend this stuff doesn't happen, but it does. Maybe the movies are getting too real. Maybe life doesn't provide us with enough wiggle room.

But hope, there's always tomorrow.

Beautiful is Boring

2009-04-16T21:32:00.002-04:00

Beautiful is boring.

It has no story to tell,

no funny smell.

His Ghost

2009-04-15T20:47:00.000-04:00

Being the President

must be like walking with your guardian angels

everyday Except you could

talk to them, hear about their days,

maybe get to know their families You’d see their

faces as they dove over top of you Looking

back as the shots rang out Shock waves

rang out and spattered you On the pavement

your angel gets his wings You are alive

and his soul just left the solar system No more

talk of ordinary days or afternoons on the stoop

No more wedding photos or Graduation celebrations,

birthdays, or nice chat at the end of the drive way

Your bullet got him cold,

as you covered your eyes

you didn’t see who was falling for you NO surprise

No you were not caught by surprise U turned into

somebody who would stop bullets so the President

could cast a vote in your favor You weren’t alive

to see the President take over your home Deal away

your job over a game of Poker with the Other Guy

But you were still his angel He walked behind you

so people could walk behind him Walk behind him

don’t run after shadows Don’t turn into

a shadow of a man who’s so willing give up his ghost.

Everything

2009-04-14T18:50:00.003-04:00

Everything is a situation we cannot control;

everything is losing it's mind.

Everything is lost, few things are found,

everything is up, even when it's down.

Everything looks picturesque, and pure;

everything misbehaves.

Everything is good and bad,

everybody goes to confession to lie,

everything is born, just to die.

Everything is awake,

but breathing rather quiet;

everything is moving, and remaining still.

Everything always surrounds the moment,

everything is alive.

everything is blanketed by the stars at night,

and on a sober morning, blinded from the sun.

Everything is short, and sometimes sweet;

everything is messy and incomplete.

Everything laughs and everything cries,

everything lives and everything dies.

Everything goes back to school, every single day;

everything is nothing new.

Everything is lost waiting to be found,

everything watches, everything listens.

Everything seeks, and everything hides,

runs from the machine, and walks the line.

Everything comes from something else,

everything is unoriginal.

Everything is borrowed, everything is new and old.

Everything is weak, and almost bold,

everything is hollow, and everything is full;

with all the wrong ideas, we're running with the bulls.

Everything is made, but not always sells,

everything returns to the earth to rot.

Everything falls, and everything stops falling.

Everything is an answer, and a really good question.

Everything makes the news,

and the news makes everything;

everything has a shape, but not a name.

Everything has direction, but very seldom purpose.

Everything is bollemic and hugging the toilet.

Everything is lost, everything's make-believe.

Everything is a future, present and past,

Everything covers the earth like a cast,

everything is recycled,

and rebuilt to last.

Emily Post's NHL

2009-03-15T14:35:00.005-04:00

Polite hockey retired when Wayne Gretzky stepped of the ice in 1999, and jumped behind the bench in Pheonix. These days its seems the professional hockey world can't stop talking about New York Ranger right winger, Sean Avery. Okay, it's not a mystery why. He's said some things that perhaps sound better on a 1-900 line, not the third line of the Dallas Stars.

However, Sean Avery doesn't play the game any differently than did Bob Probert, Terry O'Reilly, Marty McSorley, or any other tough guy from NHL history. While most in the business consider him a liability, a whirl-pool of anger, Avery is actually a PR dream! He brings the flare that brings people to hockey areas wherever he plays. Like prize fighting, the NHL still thrives, and in this economy, survives, on being entertainment. That's why fighting is a issue caught between a rock and a hard place. While the sport can do without the accidental, unpredictable injuries, hockey can't live without the flash and flare of a heavy-weight bout.

But this isn't another justification for violence in hockey. When its side effects spill over into pee-wee hockey areas, causing parents to literally kill other parents, it's a tough case to be made for keeping the boxing in hockey. Sean Avery on the other hand.

Like him or not, Avery plays the game with passion. When he scores goals -- more often than Dennis Rodman making a field goal, or Shaq making a free throw -- he jumps around with the same flare and excitement that Ovechin displays when he scores goals. In the case of Ovechin, it happens alot more often, so we could be sick of it, but the fact is, fans love it. Fans love to see a professional athlete who loves to play the game. While you're watching, you get the feeling they would play the game regardless of how many thousands per game, and millions per year. That's the thing about Avery. When he scores, the building erupts with a jovial recklessness that happens when you're watching somebody do what they love.

This is good for the game. Sporting events in a sense are thrillers, packed with the same drama as say Cry Freedom, or Forrest Gump, less significant to be sure, but nonetheless thrilling. I truly believe that fans come to see Avery for the same reason people listen to Howard Stern: they want to see what he'll do/say next.

Stay tuned. I know you will.

Nights and Stars

2009-03-02T19:50:00.004-05:00

Laying down

breathing in night & stars

counting lights on the

jets overhead

trying to imagine

the colour of dreams

as they float

inside the heads

of the passengers

and crew keeping

watch over the flight

children awakes

the seat in front of her

with a violent kick

jars the man loose

of a dream he almost held

in his hands

combed over the years

have thinned his hair

his eyes have seen too many

stars

his face the notches of progress

and grief and laughter

hiding pain

and helpless love

for the woman

in the picture frame

The World at Lunch

2009-02-26T12:22:00.003-05:00

With the world at lunch,
I am left to contemplate the silence
of the office.
Idle pens stand at attention
in the suvenier coffee mug;
the phone cord sleeps stretched
out on the desk like a sunning snake
on a sheet of limestone;
the curser blinks with impatience
because there's nobody home
to move her.
With the world at lunch,
the office festers with hunger.

Innovation and the Ideas Economy

2009-02-24T20:25:00.007-05:00

Looking back through the political and cultural zeitguist of the Twentieth Century, one can point to several ideological trends that have guided thought, progress, and mid-wifed revolution. In the 1930s, it was the New Deal. In the 1960s it was the fight for civil rights. In the 1980s it was the superstar athlete. In the 1990s it was the internet, and digital music and photography. And now, looking back over the first decade of the Twenty-First Century, it is terrorism, nationalism, conservationism, activism, the smart consumer, and most importantly, in the 21st Century, it is innovation and ideas.

From our position in the eye of the largest economic recession since the Great Depression, we can turn our heads and notice a great diversity of problems that need our attention, and a great diversity of talent waiting to help. If Thomas Homer Dixon is right, if there really is an upside of down, then problems such as renewable energy will be the new challenge for a heroic idea yet to be explored, and the very challenge that molds a cure.

Around the world, our leaders are quick to point to the red sky at morn, and they are quicker still to worn us that it is innovation that will solve these problems. This must lead to thoughts of where this innovation will come from. Will it come from the billions around the world that live on $2 or less a day? Whatever the problem, our leaders are quick to point out that the cure, or big fixes, demands nurishing innovation.

Nurishing innovation begins in the schools around the world, where children have access to the type of stimulating environment that supplies perhaps the most fundamental element of innovation: inspiration! Whether you are looking at a painting, rehearsing a play, playing a muscial instrument, looking at molecules through a microscope, or disecting a fetal pig, the classroom is the breading ground for the ideas that this world needs.

However, during such economic times, it seems that education is being treated like the cherry on the sunday of life. If it is not a job that creates a product that people buy, that in turn creates disposable income for somebody else, it doesn't seem to matter. Take for example, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. This past weekend, CNN's John King, during his program State of the Union, interviewed the Governor about her embattled state. Michigan, the blue collar driver of the American automotive industry is doing whatever it can to help ease the pain of job losses and industry cut-backs. In reorganizing Michigan's economy, the Governor pointed out that school funding for art and music was cut to put money elsewhere.

Now, don't get me wrong, it is hard to argue against saving people's jobs in favour of funding a child to play musical instrument. But the symbol is more important. In a world so heavily reliant on the next big idea, education funding should be the last thing touched. Opportunities such as allowing a child to look through microscopes, or play musical instruments provide inspiration needed for real innovation. If we take these opportunities away, what are we left with?

Driving Through Memories

2009-02-22T16:11:00.002-05:00

Driving through memories,

I get lost in their black & white

picture frames contains a shutter

full of you & me.

Follow me down,

down this trail with me,

past the coffee shops,

bus stops shelter me

from the fall into the summer

time and play-ground swings Under

the clear-night sky,

counting kisses and promises

spread out into the unknown of night

Driving through memories,

at the place I've seen before Though

I try not to notice their

silent voices still ringing in my head I get

lost in the echos of the things we used to say

while daring the stars to blink back.

The Activist

2009-02-15T10:58:00.002-05:00

You're painting your face in the rain,

and it's getting you no where.

People comment on your pretty colours

as they disappear in the run-off

that drowns your feet.

They don't understand you,

so they shoot you dead

stares

as they walk past.

Forgetting

2009-01-23T10:05:00.003-05:00

Forget about that time

I made you go.

Forget about what

I made you throw.

Forget about the images you see,

and the shadows you hear.

Forget about the bodies,

they simply got in the way.

Forget about the shrapnel

still stuck in your knee --

that's not pain you feel,

it's strength and honour.

Forget about that flag you wear

and try to forget

you were ever there.

Beijing Spring

2009-01-14T14:58:00.000-05:00

Open wounds of revolution
weep through pages of scar literature.
Days of Red Guard youth
stand beside her like a shadow.

Liberal innovation was a cancer,
her life’s work, an open wound;

doors of perspective slammed shut.

The quiet mysteries of rural life
muted by Central People’s Broadcasting Station’s
authoritarian voice.
In the end four evils –
Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Hongwen.

Healing hands of Wei Jingsheng
were not idled by incarcerations.
From bursting clouds of hope,
rain drops fall in Beijing Spring.

The Perfect Photograph

2009-01-01T11:18:00.003-05:00

Find the perfect photograph --

capture the air in black & white.

Sun's rays slipping through

blankets of clouds.

Afternoon's automobile shifts

to evening,

as Van Gogh's stars fall out

the back

leaving sparkling eyes

scattered around the stardust.

Creative Space

2008-12-19T13:07:00.003-05:00

North America is death for the artist. In a continent so controlled by the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, any time spent searching for the leisure of contemplation becomes a simmering pot of water on the back-burner of the oven of life. Why else would the Lost Generation have chosen France to find themselves?

The artist needs a clear head to listen to the internal voices of inspiration. Now, I cannot possibly deny that it is the duty of the artist to create this head-space for her or himself, and that great artists seem to transcend chaos to reach these heavenly pastures of creative flare. For this is part of the struggle for the artist during the creative process -- to take noise and randomness and make it poetic. However, finding the ideal creative space is as hard, if not harder, than the act of creating itself.

Life and Art in the Kingdom of Normal

2008-12-13T10:21:00.005-05:00

No lights. No camera. Coral these cerebral circus noises into single file lines of brain cells that when grouped together resemble a train of thought. Walk through these wintery-frozen sleepy fields of ordinary and christmas sweaters around the fire at night watching g-rated movies full of wholesome family values and clever jokes politely covering up the suggestive colours of life not allowed inside some living rooms. Everybody's posing for a portrait, so when they're caught by surprise they look like they had a life that stretched far beyond the familiar into previously unexplored realms of thought and action. Go searching through your neighbours bathrooms so you can see what they are really washing off. Or pick up the paintbrush and try a stroke for yourself. See how it feels to finally hold the direction of your colour.

Be guided by the chemicals that expand your pupils and slow the world down so you can handle it. Don't be scared of how they look at you, there's a survivalist in everybody. Shoot. Kill. Roll-over. Play dead. Disguise yourself as a mourner in another family's wake. Try to spot the people who are faking it. The ones that, upon hearing the bad news, make it sound as if they were that person's best friend. All along they didn't even know her favourite colour, and they laughed at her when she left the room. Tourists.

Be moved by art. Get lost in another person's expression of emotion. Try to blend into their rainbow. This salty flavoured life of popcorn-at-the-movies has made me fat. Fat on life. Fat on materialism. Fat on laziness. Fat on excuses. Fat on R&B. Fat on redwine vinagerette. Fat on cell phone use while driving cars. Fat on marriage counsellors. Fat on sketch comedy. Fat on imported beer. Fat on imported cars. Fat on Versace. Fat on James Bond's a blonde. Fat on James Bond's Blondes. Fat on Christmas carols. Fat on faith. Fat.

Sell household waste as art. There's no room for it out there, under a rock. Can't sweep it under the rug of life. Let's sell it in famous art museums for millions. Like painted soup cans that sky-rocketed in price when the company changed its logo. Old soup cans. Old painted soup cans hanging on the wall by the cat-shaped clock looking down with sad expressions over speghetti-tuesday night dinners. Left-over PB&J in the freezer. Eat apples, not cigarettes - they cause bad breath and pity. Two a day can keep the doctor away.

Watch silent films so you can keep your thoughts. Don't get caught silent on the other end of the conference phonecall of life. Grab a fork. Grab it with two hands.

Kiss life on the lips and walk away smiling from the after taste.

Writer's block

2008-12-09T10:13:00.002-05:00

If I put pen to paper, something will come of it, right?

It's not that simple when you've lost your creative spark. When what inspires you doesn't surround you anylonger, you'll search for anything that may get the 'juices' flowing once again.

It starts to feel lost.

Trying

2008-11-20T16:23:00.003-05:00

I'm trying to
think of something sweet
to say to you,
but I don't remember the ABCs.

I'm trying to
carry the weight of the world
for you,
but it brings me to my knees.

I'm trying to
hold your hand in the snow,
but all I can feel
is the palm of your glove.

I'm trying to
look at the photos you send,
but I can't seem to find your smile.

I'm looking over
all the letters you send,
but I can't read between the lines.

I'm trying to
think of something better than today,
but it seems too far away.

Pulitzer My Finger

2008-11-16T22:46:00.005-05:00

The other day I got the urge to write a memoir. I sat on the couch and thought about what I'd write. I haven't been to rehab; I wasn't sexually molested as a child; after 30 years, my parents are still married; so, I can't write about that. When I grow up I want to be a; police investigator, writer, author, prolific cartoon voice; cereal-box model; fashion victim; movie of the week; one-hit wonder; junkie; spiritual junkie; heart-throb; bus driver; blind painter; lip-reader; movie-goer...

It's pretty clear that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm your priest who has turrets-syndrome, every blessing is followed by a curse. But this isn't about me, it's about what I'm going to write about me. This is a memoir, though we can bend the rules for the sake of fiction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not out to self-immolate on the lawn of James Frey's house, I just want to create a piece of art.

I want to tell you about the worst night of my life. When I was staring a twelve story fall in the face, but I spat into the night and laughed while I did. I was unemployed, no money, no prayers for rain, lost, random. That's how I lived my life. I read until I started repeating the same sentence over and over again, out loud, until the words lost all meaning. I do that with names too. I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor. Reading books, watching movies, playing guitar, writing poetry, listening to the static sound of nothing that surrounds my apartment, and lives in it like a silent roommate.

I wanted to be back following her down the road. The setting sun going down on us as we laughed, and held eachother, felt pulses, relaxed, opened our eyes as wide as the galaxy so I could really see who she was. My camera still remembers when it caught her being human. She put the makeup down, sex still in her hair, and before she left the room, she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me. As she did, her fingers pushed her hair aside, revealing the most beautiful delicate I've ever seen. A light dusting of snow that would blow away any second if you moved. So I froze, I didn't want to look away, yet it was burning my eyes just to behold. I wasn't made for this moment, when she would look to me for my love and I would release it through my eyes leaving trials down my face so she could see that my love was a more than a trickling spring a heat-wave could just evaporate. I need her again. When I fall asleep I want to know she's there counting my breaths. And I can feel her body twitch, and I'd be there in the morning to watch her open her eyes.

This is what I would have in my memoir. But I wouldn't use drugs, NO. I wouldn't want her to know that the only thing I could do to forget about her was to try and erase her image from my brian. To rub it out at the expense of what else I stood to lose in the process. Wake-up, burn. Lunch, burn. Movie, burn. Dinner, burn. Homework, burn. Poetry, burn. I burned out and felt like the stuff that was crusting the ash-tray.

I wouldn't replay this story with funnier sounding words. It won't mean the same.

Our World is Blurry to the Fish

2008-11-13T21:41:00.007-05:00

And now it's happened, we don't know why, we can't look back, we can't let go. Things we want to do now seem like a memory, a distant spot on the horizon that we cannot touch. We can fly across the date line and admire the curve of earth, but we cannot go back. The things we used to dream about have turned into a question mark that floats between us as we sleep. We can turn off the bedside light, roll over and hug the pillow, but our nightmares will surface on the other side.

What can I say to your naked back, that I can't say to your eyes. In my head I've forgotten how they sparkle and burn like rebel stars on vacation from the galaxy. Your sky, my sky, three moons over the deserted island in the middle of a crystal sea. Our world is blurry to the fish. They are introduced to it as they flop around trying to free themselves from their metal-lined fish hook dungeon. The instruments of torture we use to feed our children.

I remember nights when the earth stunk of human ignorance. The moon tried desperately to soak up what the sun couldn't burn away. We are drowning in rivers of concrete, incarcerated in phallic towers threatening to collapse. It's hard to learn about cooperation and survival in a world were the basic instinct is kill to stay in the game. We don't look in the rearview mirror because objects are as big as they appear.

This history, this forgotten story, this rhyme without a chorus, this struggle to repair a broken quilt that we've ripped apart with our hands, cannot happen because the sweat from our skin and blood from our mouths have made it poisonous to touch. A flesh eating virus will leave you naked to the bones, and strangers will turn away and shrug their shoulders saying you didn't have the guts. And you still don't know what you're made of.

Soon, our life stories will be written on gravestones that kills any flower placed underneath. Our last lay will be a dare-haunt for drunken distant coeds hot for a chill. You can't follow the footsteps to here because the dirt road of our entrails will be paved over by eye-candy arsenic draped over plastic people in strip-malls.

I was walking down the street when I saw a homeless man smiling.

Why are you smiling?

I am free.

Doesn't it rain on you at night?

Only when it rains.

Sean Connery Sings Love Songs

2008-11-11T19:40:00.019-05:00

We left the house early in the morning. Heavy curtains of fog obscured my view of the other side of the street. In the distance, I could hear the hum of early morning traffic. Sharp rays of sunshine burned my pupils, too slow to react to the brightness of the day's new dawn. We took cameras, a lens bag, and some cigarettes, putting them in the trunk before starting the car.

The car meandered through narrow streets that more closely resembled back-alleys. There was hardly room for one car on the road, when another was approaching head-on, it felt like you were locked into a game of chicken. Not that the sidewalks were any safer; people ride their bikes on the sidewalk all the time here, and try to fuck with you by coming too close. You try to regain your composure, as they laugh it off on their way to school.

Once, during the first few months of my friends arrival in Japan, he was walking one way while three teenage boys, who were riding their bikes and were approaching him head-on. He had made up his mind that we wasn't going to get out of the way this time, and right as the middle boy's bike approached, he dropped his shoulder and sent the kid flying.

"I don't really know where I'm going," my friend admitted with a sheepish grin, as we traded directions and asphalt roads for dirt. "So if we get lost, we may have to ask for help," he added.

"I thought you didn't speak Japanese very well?" I replied.

"I don't." he answered.

I lit a cigarette and rolled the window down just enough to let the smoke escape into the air. "Your Japanese sounded good at class the other day," I said, trying to encourage him.

"Trust me, it isn't. In order to read the paper here, I need to know 2000 Kenji symbols - I only know about 300."

"I guess you'll have to watch tv and let the host read you the paper." I joked.

"It makes no sense to me." he added.

Our car continued through sections of specifically laid out rice fields, which had nothing to show for themselves save the dried, crusted leftovers of the fall harvest. The air was still cool. As we made our way to the foothills of the mountains, the sun played coy with the earth, shyly retreating behind the clouds, and out again, casting curious shadows on the trees in the distance. The farther and farther we moved away from the city, the only people we saw were the occasional tree-trimmer, or farmer.

Along the highway, a tree bearing round fruit shaped like Christmas tree bulbs and coloured orange, gently swayed in the breeze.

"What type of fruit is that?" I asked my friend.

"Ah, I think they're called a persimmon, or something. I don't like them, so I'm not really sure." he answered. "Meg likes them though, try it when we get back."

"Maybe I'll pick one from a tree while we walk." ---

"Can you look at this map. We have to find highway 643, and I don't see it." he interrupted, handing me the folded piece of paper.

"Where are we?" I asked.

He ran his hand over the map, but had to return them to the wheel after the car began to veer off of the road. "Gimme a sec." he barked. Up ahead he noticed a gas station. "I'm going to pull over, gas is cheap today."

"Oil fell to $65 a barrel yesterday," I added. "Cheap gas all over the place."

"Well, it's never really that cheap here because most of it comes from elsewhere." he said. "But, it's cheaper than it has been, so I'll take it."

"That's why I don't have a car," I offered. "Too much money right now. Then again, so is a Happy Meal."

He filled the car as I went into the store to get some hiking essentials - chocolate bars and more cigarettes. I, apparently, had made a pact with myself that while I was on vacation, I would act as if my better judgment was as well. Not that cigarettes here were stronger or anything. The Marlboro Lights I smoked were like smoking a straw. This was the only sign of my stress. Let's be honest, it was either smoke, take out a city block with a big-hairy weapon, or go skydiving with a holey parachute... I chose smoking. Stress makes you feel like the world is limiting your options.

"We need a new soundtrack," my friend said as he plopped himself back down behind the steering wheel.

"Find that Rob Thomas song," I suggested.

He opened the console between us and carelessly rummaged through an assortment of mini-disks. "Maroon 5," he said, before throwing it off the glass of the rear window.

"You're not a fan I take it," I inquired rhetorically.

"It's like every video of theirs is one of his wet-dreams played out." he said.

"Sounds messy." I added.

He popped in a clear disk and began hitting the search button. One, two, three, four; and slowly, the sound of guitar and piano accompaniment filled the car. The voice came next.

It's never easy and you'll never know. What leaves you crying is what makes you whole. There ain't nobody who can show you how to find the surface when you're underground.

"That's a great lyric." he said, as he turned up the dial.

"Appropriate." I said, as I opened a fresh pack of cigarettes.

"That's why you're over here man, to forget about things."

"Feels more like I'm delaying them, than forgetting. I've put them on a shelf for ten days, and sure they'll collect a week's worth of dust, but I'll brush them off when I get home." I said as I exhaled a ploom of smoke. "Hey, stop the car a second!" I shouted.

"Okay, I'll pull in at the parking lot up ahead." he said.

"That's a great photograph. See how the fog is hiding the powerlines, you can just see the tip of the tower." I declared.

In the distance, power lines stretched across the countryside like robotic caterpillars. They were connected at intervals to large metal skeleton-towers, painted red and white. It was the type of juxtaposition I came to love about Japan, power lines and pagodas...21st century, and 1st century in the same shot. I jumped out of the car, opened the back door, and grabbed the camera.

To my dismay, I looked through the lens just in time to witness the fog clear, revealing too much of the tower. "Shit!, the photo's gone," I said.

"It isn't gone, it's just different. You have to find it again." he said, in an attempt to reassure. "Here, let me see the camera." He began firing away, and after about eight clicks, he took the camera away from his eye socket, and held it in front of my face. "Look," he insisted.

After exchanging photos, we capped our lenses and drove off. Not far from where we had just stopped, my friend turned the car suddenly, and took us up a short incline and onto a road atop a ridge that ran between two large vegetable gardens. On the other side of the ridge, a large flood plane snaked under bridges and continued into the mountains ahead. In the middle of the plane, a tiny stream of water trickled along, more closely resembling a natural spring than a river.

"You should see this river when it rains...full...this whole riverbed." he said.

We parked the car and walked along the river, taking pictures of the morning dew clinging to spider webs and flowers.

"Shoot on the apeture setting. You'll get some nice up-close shots of the flowers, and you can blur the backdrop." he instructed, handing me the camera.

"Look at the way the sun creates those shadows on the mountain," he said as I pointed to it.

"Shoot it, you have five-hundred pictures." he said in a stern voice.

"I'll take pictures all day, but I still wish I had the camera out for the cattle love back there!" he said, stuttering my steps as I laughed.

"Should've had the camera on your lap, so you're ready." said my friend.

"Next time. I don't think my girlfriend would appreciate pictures of cows fornicating, funny as it was." I replied.

When we got back in the car, the song came on again.

Will you still be there when the heartache ends?

"Imagine Sean Connery singing this song," my friend said as he and I burst out laughing.

Change: it comes in steps

2008-11-06T14:21:00.007-05:00

Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

- Norman Mailer

In the wake of the election of Barack Obama for President of the United States, the notion of change is swimming vigorously in the currents of global conversation. And as the President-Elect mounted the podium in Chicago's Grant Park, Tuesday night, he was greeted with an overwhelming sense that this change, this reformation of the familiar, was not only welcomed by the American electorate, but spilled from their bodies in the form of tears and chants of YES WE CAN.

As important as the election of the first African-American President in the history of the United States is, we must not live to dwell in this numbing state of euphoria. Though I do not doubt the visceral desire of the American citizenry for change, I fear the election of Barack Obama will be seen as change itself.

Alcoholics Anonymous relies on 12 steps to kick addictions, a personal journey that begins with the all-important first step; admitting there is a problem. We citizens of the world must remind ourselves change also comes in steps, and that this election has cemented merely the first; a person with a strong belief in the power of communities.

War Photography

2008-11-03T14:06:00.007-05:00

An angry mob attacks a man who stumbles down the street in a semi-conscious attempt to escape the clutches of their fists, clubs and knives. As blood runs down his face from a fresh head-wound, it mixes with his tears and clouds his vision; he falls...

A young Tutsi man turns his head, as if sitting for a closeup, exposing a series of deep laceration scars on his scalp and cheeks; with half of his right ear missing, he wonders if anybody is listening...

In a bunker in war-torn Grozny, a Chechen rebel clutching a M-4 assault rifle with white knuckles, lets out a battle-cry captured in the silence of black and white photography...

These images are but a few examples of the places and events which American photojournalist and war photographer James Nachtwey has seen, and been witness. His images equal the power of the explosions that have ripped through Grozny, and Sarajevo, leaving us to wonder who, or what type of evil can explain the pieces leftover.

The importance of capturing humanity at its worst in order to hope for the best, is the driving force for Nachtwey, who has photographed acts of war, terror and human suffering from the African famines of the early 1990s, to 9/11. For Nachtwey, news of these and other tragedies like them are most intimately and honestly captured in photographs. It remains a mystery to him (and myself) that humanity could be pushed to such liminality, that the only means of defense, the only means of hope, the only act of freedom, is to kill that which shares our suffering...our fellow human beings.

It is hard to deny the power of photography. Photojournalists force us to look not only with our eyes, but with conscious reflection at the consequences of human suffering. Nachtwey's quest to stop the cycle of human violence through photographs -a quest undeniably noble and necessary- begs some questions as to whether or not such a revelation of understanding can be instigated by silent observers - the photojournalist. Are not these photographs simply lost in the milieu of images we see everyday?

There is a visceral haunt that festers in the minds of photojournalists; they see the violence; they capture a newly-fired bullet leaving a white-hot chamber; but they cannot move the targets, lest they should become targets themselves - they can do nothing to stop the violence in the heat of the moment. Like journalists, whose pen is their pistol, the knowledge we gain from war photography is in retrospect, forever carrying the hope of never again.

Nachtwey has tasked himself with understanding something much bigger than himself; for war is a needle in the vein of humanity. It blurs our vision and dilates our pupils with power and greed, leaving precious life in the blind spot.

Perhaps it is too easy look away;
too easy to say their problems are a world away;
to convince ourselves that they are them,
not us.
To do this, is to deny that the sun shines and rain is wet.

Away from me

2008-11-02T18:18:00.003-05:00

I don't want you

to only be a memory;

though I'm starting

to think of you that way.

My showers are your tears,

piped in from where you are

away from me.

Let`s Go (let go)

2008-10-30T01:51:00.016-04:00

I think of you from time to time,
when nobody is looking at me.
But you just can`t find the time,
and I mumble the words I want to rhyme.

I`m a window, you`re the curtain,
what you`re hiding, I`m not quite certain.
I`m the rowboat on an angry sea,
you`re the rippled reflection staring up at me.

So, let`s go,
through the trees, past the forest
where we can witness heaven
on our knees.
Let`s go,
through the city, past the limits
through the neighborhoods
of simple ways, the good old days.

Get lost in traffic lights, crumpled maps
and afternoon naps.
Cloud your conscience in the rain;
barefeet on pavement doesn`t feel the same.
This cold that surrounds you now,
sets in without a sound, but my hands
to hold you up are bound.

Pick up the leftover pieces of me,
and put them back together
like I`m your puzzle.
Your ink outlines me like a muzzle
as I stare with blank eyes from the wall,
didn`t get the chance
to lay down beside you.

Let`s go,
to your bedroom so I can come
to know you well, promise
I won`t kiss and tell.
This is a secret for you and me
two locks,
but you have the only key.

You are my care-taker,
my heart-breaker,
the pepper to my salt-shaker,
fork and knife, save my life
plan written down in dreams

so it seems
the stars keep moving back on me.

Reflections

2008-10-26T08:18:00.003-04:00

Awake to the sound
of rain on the glass;

The bathroom mirror
still remembers the way
your face looks when you smile;
the candle`s still glows
to warm your hands;
the naked piano keys don`t
dance without your fingers.

All I see in the window
is myself without you;
as my saddness runs down the glass.

Funding Artists: a sign of the times

2008-10-20T15:35:00.005-04:00

In his recent article entitled "real artists don't need grants," writer and author D'Arcy Jenish confronts Canadian cultural legend Margaret Atwood's attack on the Harper government's planned cuts to the arts community, with some thoughts of his own.

While Atwood makes the case that government funding for the artistic community is vital, Jenish seems to think that funding should only go to those that have talent, 'and precious few really do.'

Though he doesn't offer a definition of what 'talent' might be, he opens the closest of literary and artistic creativity -- embodied throughout the 20th century by such names as; Morley Callaghan, Sinclair Ross, Frederick Philip Grove, Ernest Buckler, Stephen Leacock, Gabrielle Roy, and artists Emily Carr, A.Y. Jackson, and Jean Paul Lemieux -- to make the case that these artists were not government funded and were able to produce works of high artistic merit and inspiration. And he is not wrong, they did.

Morley Callaghan was a Governor-General Award winning novelist (1951), who began publishing in the late 1920s. Sinclair Ross was known for his novel As for Me and My Horse (1941). Frederick Philip Grove, a immigrant from Western Prussia (now Poland), was frequently published in many genres until his death in 1948. Ernest Buckler, a mathematician from Nova Scotia became famous for his The Mountain and the Valley (1952). And rounding out the writers, the legendary Stephen Leacock, who died in 1948.

As for artists, Jenish names the Canadian icon Emily Carr, a native of British Columbia who drew her inspiration from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of Canada, who died in 1945. Also, Alexander Young (A.Y.) Jackson -- founder of the Group of Seven artists who rose to fame in Canada during the 1920s -- who became famous with his painting Red Maple (1914).

Jenish was right to highlight their creative brilliance and their influence on Canadian culture heritage. However, while his appropriate name-dropping may seem clever, his article illustrates an ignorance to context. Yes, they had all established their careers pre-1957 --when the Government of Canada began subsidizing artists --but this time period is left unexplored in this article.

If he had bothered to, he would have discovered that there is a difference in the lives of artists then and artists now.

The nature of entertainment was different prior to the late 1930s, when televisions were first made commercially available. The average household got their entertainment, not from hours upon hours of cartoons, video games, and movies, but from novels, and radio plays.

In addition, what we consider cultural experience is different today than it was then. Prior to the television-revolution, people were more likely to get their entertainment from the theatre, art galleries, and novels. If you took a poll today, I'm willing to bet that many people would consider going to a foreign film, a football game, or a fashion show a cultural experience.

In sum, artists today live in a ultra-competitive creative world and face illegitimacy not only from critics, not only from other artists, but from other artistic and cultural mediums like television, movies, the Internet, and a plethora of sporting events.

Just because art -- be it in the form of the novel, sculpture, or painting -- doesn't seem to have the prominence it once had, doesn't mean that its funding is not important. Jenish's argument does little more than to highlight the conservative attitude toward public spending -- and that's fine -- but if that's the argument you're going to make, considering the whole picture and not just pieces of the puzzle would be a better way to make the argument.

Politics

2008-10-18T16:04:00.002-04:00

Night air surrounds

the students at the pub -

philosophy on the patio;

linguistics with the silverware;

sexuality in the cross-room stare.

I don't see the point of this;

though at times I myself

am unaware.

Backyards in New York City

2008-10-14T16:17:00.003-04:00

Midnight in New Amsterdam,

America's bedroom for a one-night-stand.

Sexy jazz and jazz club sex,

sour house wine and cigarettes.

Confessional notes on the bathroom walls,

and sleeping it off in hotel halls.

Awake with her lipstick still on your face, you search

yourself in the bathroom mirror.

You look from atop the Empire State Building,

and see a vision of prosperity the world traded.

You, Me and Democracy

2008-10-13T11:31:00.008-04:00

Elections for public office remind us that we have choices to make. If our aim is the improvement of our democracy, the most important choice any citizen living under a democracy can make, is to undergo the necessary work of participating in the decision making processes of our country.

This interaction must take place at the community level, and work up; the momentum of top-down government trickles out before reaching the neighborhoods and school yards that would benefit from the inertia of large-scale politics.

To produce charge, to motivate change, and most importantly to mother positive changes in the community, gathering the voices of the suburbs and neighborhoods should be step one. And the changes don't have to be national to make an impact.

Consider these simple activities:

1) Promote local food networks:

Community gardens play an important role not only in controlling the cost of food, but also as a necessary component of conservation, partnership and cooperation. Considering the continual processes of urban sprawl, designating areas to be used for green space is the first step to ensuring natural habitats for local wildlife, creating space to plant new trees, and most vitally, making room to produce food for the community, which goes along way to ensure greater food security.

Cities across Canada have in recent years begun to grow their own community garden partnerships; the Toronto and Ottawa Community Garden Networks, for example. These networks play a useful role in the creation and city-wide expansion of areas designated to public gardens. Public gardens have also been useful in the restoration of run-down urban neighborhoods. By replacing abandon buildings, houses and vacant lots with productive gardens, they play a large role in shaping healthy gathering venues.

Above and beyond, however, community gardens foster good democratic values such as cooperation, participation and comradeship. The right to peaceful association is a right guaranteed to all Canadian citizens, creating space for peaceful assembly is up to us.

2) Get up and clean up!

Organizing highway and park cleanups is another useful tool for fostering and building participation in the democratic community. Canadians are fortunate to have such a large country with lots of space for everybody. Sometimes, though, our knowledge of this space allows us to forget that no matter how much space with think we have, it's important to use it wisely and treat it with respect.

Neighborhood-size cleanups are easy to organize. You can start by posting flyers in your community to get the word out fast; post them on lamp-posts, the local public library, grocery stores, liquor stores -- just be sure to ask the manager! Give a contact number for people to call for information. Once your message is out there, word-of-mouth is a useful tool to spread the idea around and build community involvement.

When I was in high school, our geography teacher organized a highway clean-up for the class. It was a great way to spend the day, outside, with friends -- after that, pitching in and doing our part for a greener globe was just a bonus.

For those living in apartment complexes, you can help by organizing building recycling days, where once a week, tenants go around and collect recyclable materials from participating apartments. Often times high-rise buildings have garbage shoots conveinatley located on each floor, while the recycle bin is down in the parking garage. More often than not, separating rubbish becomes an unlikely chore people are unwilling to do.

These exercises promote physical activity and play an important role in building community consciousness around a healthy environment.

3) Clearity for Charity

Getting physical exercise regularly promotes a healthy body. In times of stress, going for a workout can provide the clearity you seek, while putting problems in perspective. This too can be an opportunity to promote democratic values such as charity.

Why wait for the local Running Room race weekend, or M+M Meat Shop Charity BBQ, organize an event yourself. A simple community activity for example, would be a race-walk. It doesn't have to be long, only 5 or 10k, to be effective. Walking is something that almost everybody can do; it doesn't require expensive equipment, great physical strength or endurance; and most importantly, it doesn't limit the activity to a particular demographic. By using the same advertising message I previously mentioned, you could charge participants a small fee, and at the end of the day give the proceeds to a good cause in your community, like the Ottawa Mission, for example.

Group sporting activities are a great way to spread comradeship and sportsmanship around a community. Everybody goes at their own pace, everybody cheers for everybody, everybody crosses the finish line.

4) Volunteer

Almost everybody can say they're too busy to spend time volunteering. They have work, they have kids, they have soccer practice, band camp -- lots of reasons why they can't pitch in.

To working moms and dads; bring your kids! Participating in volunteering at a young age can be a useful tool to promote cultural sensitivity, compromise and understanding. Having your children volunteer on local political campaigns - handing out flyers, et-cetera - helps build the notion that it is their birthright to participate directly in their local, provincial and federal governments.

They will learn about the issues that will impact their futures; they will learn about the range of choices they have before them; they will learn how to achieve goals; they will learn to be passionate.

To the local jocks: bring your teammates! Sports teams are be effective at mobilizing change because, especially in small towns, they have a following. If you took a hockey team for example, and added all the people that come to their games, it wouldn't be long before you had a small army of helpers ready to clean up highways, hold bake sales, canvass for local political candidates. The energy of a team can also be inspiring.

These are just a few of the many examples that illustrate and emphasize the importance of community in democracy. If nobody knows what's good for the community, than those who live in it must make take the lead.

CFL or NFL?

2008-10-03T10:58:00.002-04:00

On December 7, 2008, the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League (NFL) will play the first of eight games (scheduled over the next three years) in Toronto at the Rogers Center, formally the SkyDome. For the Canadian Football League (CFL) this is cause for concern.

The League and its American counterpart have always shared the continent, and both are rich in history. While the American league featured the NFL Championship until the merger of the American Football League (AFL) and the NFL in 1967 created the Super Bowl, the CFL (offically formed in 1958) can trace its origins back to the 1860s.

Growing up in Windsor Ontario gave me the chance to indulge in both forms of the game. During the high school week I played football the Canadian way, on the weekend I watched football the American way. To this day I watch both leagues.

If you ever get the chance to attend a CFL game live, say in Winnipeg, or Edmonton, or Calgary, you might be swept away by the seemingly cult following on which the CFL game survives. With only eight teams in the league, over the course of the 20th century some storied rivalries have developed. From Calgary and Edmonton to Hamilton and Toronto, these games have polarized fans, and have helped provide heat to the simmering crazy of game day at Ivor Wynne Stadium, for example.

However, the history of the CFL has seen teams become renamed, plagued by season after season of financial losses, with Ottawa's own team returning only to disappear four seasons later. While the NFL has seen teams relocate -- the St. Louis Rams from Los Angeles and the Indianapolis Colts from Baltimore --and has had teams leave and return again --the Oakland Raiders returned from Los Angeles and the Cleveland Browns reincarnated --these goings-on never seem to affect the financial success of the NFL.

If a team opens up in a new NFL city --the Jacksonville Jaguars, for example -- they land in an untapped resource of NFL followers, and the market soon expands on this. In the CFL, not only does the league not have enough money to infiltrate new football markets, when they do open a new team, the following isn't always there.

This is not an argument for Canadian football fans lacking a passion for football, or that the CFL lacks history; after all, the Grey Cup saw its 95th game last season! This is about marketing.

After many seasons watching both CFL and NFL games, I believe the NFL began doing something the CFL should have, long ago. PICK A DAY TO PLAY!!

It's hardly an epiphany or a ground-breaking revelation to proclaim that people like routines. The NFL has created its own image in the cornerstone of routine in people's lives --the same way that Hockey Night in Canada has also. The way the NFL clusters its games on one day --Sunday --has shoehorned itself into the lives of ordinary Americans.

The CFL doesn't do this; games could be on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday afternoons for example, which makes their tv schedule hard to follow.

Of course we can't chastise the CFL totally, the NFL has more money. Ever wonder why? The Super Bowl, Monday Night Football (now Sunday Night Football), have become regular events because they fit nicely into everybody's schedule, and everybody knows when the games are played. When is the Super Bowl? the first Sunday in February (it moved from the third Sunday in January); when is Sunday Night Football? EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT, like clockwork.

The bottom line; when you cement your games into the convenient routines of ordinary people, they will watch, they will become FANatics. The CFL needs a Sunday night!

Harbour Leaves

2008-09-23T15:03:00.001-04:00

Here I sit quietly, sipping coffee by the sunless sea.
Billowing rain clouds shaped like pillows
pout as they silently float past.
Giant arms of rock hug the harbour,
as my pen catches them trying to
embrace like long-lost lovers.
High above the town, a castle
keeps watch over the inlet waters,
as it waits for a ship to pass below.
The island's weather has
been recorded on its stones
and its tears have been
blown cold and dry
by the north Atlantic wind.
Fishing boats are docked on the opposite shore;
four or more rest out of season.
Wooden-covered island houses coloured like rainbows
are scattered amongst the rock,
while their roofs are littered with golden leaves
as they fall from autumn trees.

Ginsberg & Friends

2008-09-19T10:17:00.009-04:00

For Those Stary-Eyed Dynamos Burning Up in the Machinery of Night

Take three deep
mind breaths

and forget everything you know -
dock the censorship
and open your eyes.

The poems read like
uncooked rants from
the bleeding heart of chaos;

Who's words appear as naked as he was on stage;
reliving his nightmares on stage.

He mocked America;
taunted America;
begged a cross-dressing America to take off her clothes;

Wrote to Gary Snyder through
a holy cloud of laughing gas;
visited Kerouac in Queens, while Hunke talked to Kinsey;

Cried for Cassidy to beat him while
he screamed crazed confessions to
the secret hero of his poems.

He read Blake; heard Blake; saw Blake in 1948.

1952 - starred as David in JC Holmes' Go -
Holmes kept going until 1988.

Howl on trial 56;
elders screaming
while he was riding around in green automobiles
shouting Europe!Europe!

He saw afternoon in Seattle,
and road the Witchita vortex
all the way to Tangier where
Burroughs went to the junk-house for a naked lunch.

O'Hara gone in 1966;
1968 - Cassidy counts railway ties until he dies.

Wrote eulogies for Kerouac, 1969;
Converted to California-Buddhism
like B. Kaufman (b.1925 -d.1986), who spent the 1950s speaking poetry
into San Fransisco cars -
sat on Carson's couch in 1970.

No Pulitzer;
No Poet Laureate;
No Lew Welch after 23 May 1971.

National Book Award in 72.

Ask him about
the Jester, Carl Solomon, Rockland,
O'Hara's ghost wandering Fire Island, Moloch, Buddhism, Natalie Jackson, Cassidy,
suicidal dreams, penetration,
Dr. Williams, Louis Ginsberg,
J. Edger Hoover, the West,
Kerouac, Kammerer,
secret police, state terror,
anger, self-loathing,
the callous stench in the capitol air,
what research shows,
partying with Kesey and the Angels,
hitchhiking with Snyder,
the virtues of Corso,
the sins of Times Square,
the cold-water flats of the East Village, the apartments on the Negro streets,
the couches and blowing smoke rings from tea,
the sage-like advice of Rexroth,
the cottage in Berkeley,
3119 Fillmore Street,
Ferlinghetti shining the City Lights on Howl,
Uncle Max, Orlovsky,

& Naomi.

Video Sites Sharing More Than Entertainment?

2008-09-17T11:32:00.002-04:00

These days, you can see just about anything on the internet. If it has a name, you will most likely find it. From Surf the Channel, which boasts an impressive catalogue of streaming movies and popular television shows from around the world, to Knickerpicker.com, where women (and most likely a few gentlemen) can watch real models strut down the runway in order to get a visual before ordering lingerie - the internet has everything!

In recent years, the internet has grown out of its information super-highway wardrobe, and is, in ever-increasing fashion, becoming a place where individual users come to share. From online encyclopaedias, such as Wikipedia, to video sites such as Youtube, the internet is rapidly becoming a personal place in the world.

However, there is something scary about sharing – you never really know what you are looking at. In the same way that spam emails can be used to con the everyday person out of money, or other sensitive information, video sharing sites can be used to advertise illegal behaviour. Alarmist, perhaps, however, I was recently watching Youtube, and came across a person’s video file, wherein they shoot movies of fires. The video I happened to be watching depicted an electric-power transformer exploding. The shaking camera filmed the night creeping in on the flaring ball of fire, as voices of concerned citizens looked on.

Let me be clear, videos such as this, are, doubtless, produced with the intention of advertising news (if we broaden, and perhaps sensationalize what we consider to be news). However, arsonists are, not always, but in extreme cases, pyromaniacs; and in a world where bizarre crimes happen yearly, we cannot rule out the role that video sharing sites play in advertising their crimes by passing them off as entertainment.

Think I’m out to lunch? Not really. In the late 1990s, the popular crime show America’s Most Wanted ran a story involving a serial arsonist, who – wait for it – videotaped his crimes as they were happening. In similar videographical style as the Youtube post, this man set fire to expensive homes, and watched them burn. On the tapes that were released, his voice can be clearly made out, narrating the fire’s destruction.

BY NO MEANS, am I branding this Youtubeer with the same charge; I’m simply saying that with the anonymity of video sharing sites, you never really know if you are looking at something intended to be more than entertainment.

An Atheist’s Best Friend, or Light in the Dark of Night

2008-09-10T12:24:00.000-04:00

At the end of The Dark Knight, the latest addition to the Batman canon, viewers were left with the image of the Joker – played brilliantly by the late Health Ledger – hanging upside down, staring a fatal tumble from the steel canopy of Gotham City in the face, while Batman – played by Christian Bale – looks on, and then leaves him hanging in the balance. It would have been too easy, perhaps, for Batman to unclench his fist and send the Joker his final punch-line, but Batman would never do such a thing.

The reality is something that Batman understood thoroughly when he left the Joker hanging in the balance – not the balance of law and order – however, the balance of good and evil. The movie is but one portrayal of the ongoing conflict between what is understood to be ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ The dilemma is that one cannot exist without the other. This is something that the Joker mentions while being interrogated by Gotham City police detectives, when he compares himself to a dog chasing cars, saying he ‘wouldn’t know what to do if he actually caught one.’

The Joker wouldn’t know what to do because he would be involuntary thrust into an argument for his own validity. To be the ‘evil’ counterbalance to Batmans’ ‘good.’

This reminds me of another argument, or conflict, between two other columns of society – the believer, and the atheist. While both argue from completely different angles, it is important to realize that Atheism is the second oldest idea in the history of Theology – the first being, belief, or faith itself.

Where the believer has the Holy Scriptures to backbone his favour for Christ, Allah, Thor, Buddha, et-cetera, the Atheist grounds his ‘faith’ in the wisdom of science and reason. Both are perfectly appropriate sources of validation. However, these two groups never admit the necessary existence one group represents to the lives of the other.

In this sense, Atheism needs the Believer, and vice-versa, as much as the Joker needs Batman. Because the Atheist argues for revolution, and the Believer for revelation, the Atheist would consider hoards of Believer’s abandoning their faith to be a revelation, and the Believer would consider the same feet, a revolution.

NRA Barbeques and Texas Afternoons

2008-08-13T12:14:00.002-04:00

It’s hardly surprising that the most recognizable public figure, next to the Pope perhaps, is the President of the United States. People around the world know where he lives, what his daily schedule is, who he meets with, who he sleeps with, where he went to school, whether or not he inhaled marijuana, or exhales lies on a daily basis. It’s pretty safe to say, with all proceeds going to the United States political machine, that most people recognize the Leader of the Free World. But what happens when George W. Bush leaves the Oval?

The ceremonial thing to do is open a Presidential Library. Since Hubert Hoover, every subsequent President has built a facility meant to house his papers, books, and basically everything he has ever said out loud in his life – even the things he wished he didn’t say! Most Presidential libraries have faux-Oval Offices, with all the trappings of the White House: personal gifts they were given while in Office, perhaps a portrait standing ornate beside a silent shelf of dusty books; journals; his favourite pen; and lots of press photos. President Reagan’s Library in California even has the Air Force One that was used up until George W. Bush.

Trouble with George W. Bush is that, when you say library, your mind does work together images of him looking stately, sitting comfortably thumbing through an Allen Bloom translation, under a Stetson hat. NO. Keep in mind this is the President who is on record saying, ‘the best thing about books is some times they have interesting pictures.’ When somebody says that, my gut reaction is usually to vomit until I pass out. So you can see how I find it interesting to question just what would Bush put in his Presidential Library?

Honestly, a water-slide. Have you ever seen George W. Bush at a press event or the G8 last month for example? He doesn’t walk around like a concerned man with the weight of the world on his shoulders – as one might expect. NO, rather, he acts like a 12 year old at a father and son picnic. There he will be, grinning a silly grin, and calling world leaders by nicknames – screaming ‘YO Harper,’ with the same enthusiasm as one kid calling the neighbourhood’s attention to the ice-cream truck. So far, no books.

There might however, be a journal: Reveries of Nap Time, by George W. Bush. The President is usually a man who never gets any sleep because he stays up all night with staff and advisors from the Pentagon, participating in vigorous debates about some important and perhaps dangerous world event. Not Dubya. For the first time in a long time, there was an Executive Order regarding the President’s bedtime: 9:30pm, no exceptions; well, okay, wake only in case of national emergency. In addition to the adolescent bedtime, Dubya would also take naps during the day. This is what throws me; in between the jogging and frat boy reunions in Crawford Texas, when does he find the time to nap? Lucky for him the Oval Office comes equipped with couches, ready and waiting to carry the weight of Operation Dreaming Eagle.

Something else about former Presidents is that they are entitled to lifetime protection from the Secret Service. This decision however, was amended by Congress in such a way that the last President to receive life time protection is Bill Clinton. The current rule mandates that once a President leaves Office, he is protected by the Secret Service for ten years. In the wake of 9/11 and the mystery of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, Congress has gone back to the drawing board on this one. It’s probably a good thing, because all the ten year protection does in guarantee somebody is waiting, with full metal jacket and landmines, in the tall grass for the 11^th year. Probably not, Bush is surprisingly popular.

Former Presidents get into all different types of work once they leave Office. President Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work with Amnesty International; President Clinton went to marriage counselling, and followed the lecture circuit for $1000 a plate; Nixon became a recluse; Reagan forgot who he was; and George H.W. Bush still reads CIA briefings (every former President is entitled to them). SO, WWDD: What Would Dubya Do?

Bush The Younger is one of the few Presidents never to have penned a book before being elected. And he might as well be the first sitting President never to have read one either; what with all the napping and traveling and bruiting at G8 summits. SO, it pretty safe to say HE won’t be writing his political memoirs; but he will probably pay a ghost writer – Karl Rove might be looking for work. It is also safe to say that after eight years of Republicans waging wars based on erroneous information, setting up extra-legal prisons, and turning a budget surplus into a history breaking deficit, nobody in their right mind would pay over $2 dollars and a stroll across the street to hear Dubya spin colloquially behind a podium, with flash cards and a colouring book in case he gets bored.

Wait, I’m wrong, there might be one group that would not only sit and listen to Dubya, but actually extend him an invitation to speak: the NRA. Upon hearing the news of Dubya’s triumphant return to his ranch in Crawford, the local chapter president of the NRA might suggest a barbeque honouring George W. Bush’s time in the White House, with an afternoon of skeet-shooting, over the wide-open Texas sky.

The Sycophant and the Big Mouth

2008-08-12T08:43:00.003-04:00

I have studied politics for several years; at Carleton University, at Mike’s Place, in the locker room, walking down the street, at the bookstore - everywhere. During these conversations, doubtless, I have traversed the political spectrum, ideologically and even emotionally, with whomever I happen to be talking. And while I have become engaged with several different types of political minds - academics, students, street-poets - I can tell you this: politics is responsible for two types of people: the sycophant, and the big mouth.

The sycophant is a political nomad, wondering the wilderness in search of ideas on which he or she can sustain themselves. They live in swing states. For these people, general elections are side-walk sales and campaign speeches have them perpetually perched on the edge of their seat. They are drunk with hope, but they are hopeless. They are also the type of voter that candidates and incumbents like the most; they can be won over with smiles, promises, town hall meetings, and poll-tested electioneering tactics.

Sycophants are not the type of person who watches political commentary shows like the Cobert Report, or The Daily Show with John Stewart, and they are certainly not the type of person who watches CTV’s Question Period with Craig Oliver on Sunday mornings. NO. The sycophant watches Oprah, and runs out to buy a copy of so-and-so’s new book. If the House of Commons where a Golden Calf, sycophants are the people living it up at the base of the mountain.

On the other hand, is the Big Mouth. Obnoxious, to be sure, the Big Mouth can be identified by a few characteristics. Firstly, they are usually the ones that are formally educated. Some of them have more acronyms behind their name than the alphabet has letters. They insist that you call them doctor, but if you went to them to fix a broken leg, all they would tell you is that they are actually a Ph.D.

The big mouth is also someone who claims to have studied politics from a breath of standpoints, but could not locate objectivity on a map. They are the ones that you can start a conversation with, and listen to as they finish it. While the sycophant resembles a political schizophrenic, the Big Mouth is a born-again. Big Mouths have ‘seen the light’ and make sure they tell everybody they lecture, that that person is entitled to the Big Mouth’s opinion. Big Mouths are also the type of person who prescribes to a certain political ideology: Marxism, Libertarianism, Anarchism, Federalism, whatever it is, they make sure you know about it. This becomes their screening process, which you can practically hear when you’re talking to them.

Houseless, not homeless.

2008-07-31T19:58:00.005-04:00

This past week, the world surprised me. Maybe I've become jaded by Springer, or have become complacent by GST cheques, whatever the case may be, it totally shook me from my repose.

I live in Ottawa's downtown. I'm a ten minute walk to work, three blocks from a grocery store, two blocks away from my cousins, and I can see a Tim Horton's from my bedroom window. Most nights I can hear whatever is happening on the street below me, with the same clarity that I would if the events were taking place in my living room. Bus doors opening and closing, road construction, domestic disturbances, drunk Ottawa Senators fans honking their wild horns, and drunk people Russian waltzing between watering holes. The only time I can't hear anything is when it's raining. As I type, there is a large high-rise construction crane, painted yellow, staring at me through my window. Nobody's there. Every time I look at the crane, my eyes go straight to the three slabs of concrete that are bolted to the opposite end, which constitute the counter-balance. Every time I look at the crane, I think of one of two scenarios: the first is that the crane operator is watching my every move, like some undercover Big Brother; and the second, is that the three slabs of concrete will become loose and fall crashing to the earth, either killing whomever may be passing on the sidewalk below, or seriously maming them.

On my way to work, I become a part of the not-so-random acts of the city. I never understood while people call cities jungles. When you look at them from a higher vantage point, you realize the happenings and peculairities of a given city, more closely resemble a hamster on a wheel. Each day the same people walk the same streets, to work in the same parts of the city, take the same bus to walk (and why wouldn't they?), meet the same friends for coffee, at the same coffee shop, while ordering the same thing they always order, smiling the same smile, laughing their work laughs and flexing all the important work muscles: good handshake, not too firm, you don't want your boss to think you're trying to impress him/her, shit, your palms are wet with nervous sweat, but she can't see you wiping it on your pants. This isn't exciting.

Another thing about downtown, is that there are a lot of homeless people, some of whom are travelers trying to find help staying at a hostel. When I walk to work, I usually stop at the Tim Horton's I can see from my bedroom window, get a coffee and leave with my pocket ringing of change. The first person that asks me for change, or that I see sitting as dosile as Hindu cows on the side of the sidewalk, I will give them the change. I give more if I have it on me. Most people I see, pass by them without a care in the world, or even an acknowledgement of their existence. Now, I can't say that I haven't done this either. But after a while, you start to see the same people, standing, sleeping, or sitting on the same patch of sidewalk, and after a while, you start to expect to see them. On my walk to work, I usually pass a woman who asks you for a dollar for coffee - at any time of day, I've never seen her at night. She's hard to understand because she has speech impediment that disrupts her words. She also walks like she's commanding a battalion of Monte Pythons performing the Ministry of Sillywalks. I don't know anything about this woman, this isn't judgement, these are my observations. Somebody looks after her though, because when it's cold, she'll have a warm jacket.

Another man I see, sits in a wheel-chair, and has a gigantic Basset Hound that stops and smells all the roses. I passed him once and remarked that I admired his dog, whose name it turned out was Moe, and he said, 'oh he could sniff that damn wall all day if I let him.' You could tell he and Moe had been together for quite some time.

When I walk home from work, I used to see a man that looked like Walt Whitman reincarnated. He would sit beneath the awning of a government building when it rained, or a little further up the street when it was sunny. He also had a dog, a black one that looked like a Husky/Lab mix. The man would speak a foreign language I didn't understand, very quiet to himself whenever anybody walked past him on the street. He had a map of the world on his face, deep blue eyes, and an old fishing hat on his head, which covered his wirey gray hair. Tucked away in his thick gray beard (hence the Whitman comparison), his aging teeth showed when he smiled. I've worked downtown for almost a year now, and every time I walked home from work, for a span of five months, I would see him sitting at his corner, with his dog and an overturned hat.

About three weeks ago, he was gone. There was nothing left of him, except a piece of paper taped to the bricks of the building he always leaned against. I passed by not thinking anything of it. Next day, same thing, I was walking home, about to cross the street onto the block where he sat, but there was two pieces of paper and a bouquet of flowers laying on the ground underneath the papers. As well, there were two women in business suits kneeling down, looking like they were reading the paper, and talking to each other. So I stopped, and took a look at the paper. One of the pieces of paper had a name and a life span written across it, the other, advertised a picture. In the picture, was the portait of the gray-bearded Whitman twin, fishing hat and all. Over the course of the week, when I passed by, I noticed more flowers and people stopping to read the sign and look at the picture.

Most of these people I could tell worked in the area, meaning, that they would probably have seen this man during the course of their routines as well. I'm not sure who put the signs or the picture there, but I am sure of the effect it had on the neighbourhood. Everybody stopped to read the sign, or lay flowers, or reminisce with their co-workers, as I would overhear a couple of times, about the homeless man who died.

Every once in a while, we are reminded about humanity - the day I noticed people caring about the absence of this man from the sidewalk was mine. Anytime you see a homeless person, you may wonder about their situation - what got them there, does anybody know they are spending the cold nights huddled under cardboard - but then you walk away. You never notice that, while they may not have a house, the streets are their home. My mother likes to believe that maybe some are angels. Maybe she's right, I'm not really sure. But I know one thing, you still miss them when they're gone.

I Went Walking

2008-07-31T13:14:00.002-04:00

I went walking
under newly-lit street-lamps
suggesting bed time;

past the parked cars and
garbage bins dragged to the curb;
past extinguished porch-lights
that say without saying 'do not disturb.'

I walked through intersections,
under traffic lights reflected off the
vacant pavement below.

The midnight wind my compass tonight,
as I walk in the direction it blows;
by the corners of foundations
where it whistles going past,
as the baggy underarms of my jacket
swell like sails on a mast.

Hidden Gems

2008-07-30T16:23:00.002-04:00

Have you ever taken a minute to look at your bookshelf, I mean really look at it? If you’re like me, you wonder how you ever thought you’d have the time to read all of those books. Somewhere during metamorphosis, the feeling changes from a private relaxation technique, to obsession, before arriving at ominous.

I’ve been thinking about a couple of things, and wondered if any of you were as well. As this blog may hint, I love to read, so much so, that I can’t pick a favourite author. It has become the ‘what’s your favourite movie’ question. The answers lie in different time zones it seems. I will tell you they definitely lie in different bookstores. In keeping with this blog’s first post, I must reiterate that, while I don’t HATE bookstores like Chapters, or Coles…they just don’t have what I’m looking for. It seems to me that all shelves are filled with Prize-winners and top-ten lists. Nevermind the books-to-movie, movie-to-book cover books; No Country for Old Men was a great novel first.

Between 1950 and 1956, Jack Kerouac wrote eleven, full-length novels, and I’m willing to bet the average Canadian reader will only find On the Road on (most) bookstore shelves. If you asked a manager why this is, he or she would probably tell you, these titles sell best. Sure they will, everytime Oprah adds a new book to her list, the next day you can’t find one on the shelves of these Top-Ten bins. This is more than a pet-peeve; as I believe it points to a bigger issue. This kind of marketing, limits the public’s consumption of literature. Certainly, it reduces a given author’s entire canon to hiding in the shadows.

Think I’m kidding; I’ve already mentioned Kerouac, what about…Canadian poet Glen Downie, author of Wishbone Dance, Desire Lines, and most recently Loyalty Management. If you look in the Canadian poetry section of any Chapters under D, you won’t find Glen Downie, but Gord Downie and his collection Coke Machine Glow. Don’t get me wrong, I like Gord’s collection, but I can’t help but wonder which came first, the book of poetry or the Juno-winning rock band?

If you wander over to the Drama section, you might find Arthur Miller’s work; at least the Crucible and Death of a Salesman. What about All My Sons, or A View from the Bridge. I’m not saying this happens with every author, I’m merely noting some important omissions, and folks, the list could go on and on.

For this reason, I have become a fan of hunting for those hidden gems. The dank, stale air of a used bookstore, while a potent reciepe for nausua, is the best place to shop for books. One of the benefits of living in Ottawa, is that there are many great used bookstores to hunt in. It was in one of these used bookstores, where I came across an original copy of The Old Man and the Sea. I paid $20 for it, as it turns out, it’s worth about $2000.

This isn’t about dollar value for these old books, it’s about finding a hidden gem. How many of you have found an old book with a personal message from the 60s; or a note from son to father. It lets you know how far the book has come to get to you. Now that, I find interesting.

While I'm Young (promises)

2008-07-30T16:09:00.002-04:00

I'll paint pictures with my fingers,
and run them through my hair;
I'll count my chickens before they hatch, and
lose sleep dreaming of tomorrows and tomorrows -
I won't rest to dwell on yesterdays.
I'll run on empty and rejuvenate my body
with toxins concocted for its destruction -
red bull and coca-cola (I'm thinking of you).
I'll walk in my sleep until I crash in road-side
roach motels that charge a quarter for air -
empty the mini bar and head for the next great rave.
I'll speak before I think,
I'll waltz the Devil's dance
before I follow faith's first step;
I'll travel the hard road, so I'll know
to appreciate the ease of those paved smooth;
I'll live my life in poetry,
before I write it down in prose;
I'll change masks and occupations
so they don't change me;
While I'm young I'll live forever,
and I'll run for just as long;
While I"m young I'll have my thoughts
and when I'm old I'll have my scars.
Today we'll walk over the smoldering ambers
of yesterday's fire losing steam;
While I'm young I'll learn to sleep,
and when I'm old I'll learn to dream.

Remember the Novel? How Future Technologies are rewriting the words of the past

2008-07-30T10:09:00.002-04:00

After a lifetime spent teaching English literature to Yale University students, literary critic Harold Bloom was taken aback, when in 2003, the National Book Foundation – presiding over the famous National Book Award – named Stephan King the year’s recipient of its National Book Foundation Award. In an article penned for the Los Angeles Times, Bloom sited that , ‘by awarding it to King they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat.’ What Bloom has shrewdly vocalized is the decline in the value of first-rate literature. Names like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, O’Connor, Mailer, Plath and other literary giants have been assigned to the dust of used bookstore shelves.

What he called the ‘dumbing down of American readers’ is but one cell in the virus attacking the tradition of the novel. While the decline in intelligently written novels is nonetheless a disturbing phenomenon, the novel itself has become lost in the milieu of electronic devises that are rapidly threatening the sanctity of the written word. This is happening for two reasons: firstly, technological advances, most notably the internet, have over time, replaced traditional mediums that contain literature, and secondly, the way humans interact with one another is changing from personal to virtual.

Recent advancements in technology are creating physical distance between the novel and the reader. While one could argue that books and films, for instance, have coexisted since the middle of the 20th Century, the popularity of the novel did not erode until technology bridged the gap between the movie theatre, and the living room couch. The technological proliferation occurring at present has broadened our capacities to travel – via car, plane, train, foot and skateboard, to hotel rooms wired with complementary hi-speed – while downloading, watching and burning movies. Amidst this whirlpool of motherboards, I am begged to ask: does anybody remember the novel?

One possible explanation for the evaporating love of the novel is that our vision of the novel has become disconnected from past nostalgias. In other words, the things we read are more and more appearing in the virtual sense, in forms we cannot touch and feel. This impersonal shift has re-established, to a degree, the physical distance between humans and novels. It is worth mentioning the antithesis: readers will always be readers, and therefore loyal to the novel. However, the novel will disappear because it fails to attract new readers, and in failing to expand this base, those left standing under tradition’s umbrella will fade away, leaving this once-sacred love unprotected from the downpour of technological innovation.

Adding to this, the nature of human contact itself is revolutionizing. Older, more traditional forms of contact, such as letter writing and telephone conversations have been reduced to condescending names like ‘snail mail,’ or have been replaced by the stranglehold computers and cellular phones have in dictating ‘instant messages.’ What is left are populations of people corresponding electronically, and not personally. This adds up to reducing material for the novel that would otherwise be available through personal contact.

It is in this shift, from personal to virtual interaction, through the advancement and convenience of technological innovation, where the substance of the novel is not being experienced to the degree it once was. Consider if you like, science fiction: 21st Century innovation and iPods are not creating newer, more exciting forms of science fiction, anymore than they are producing newer, more exciting science fiction novels – the popularity of which may still be considered a cult. What is happening is a renewal of the recluse at the extreme end, and a new population of humans whose sole interaction with the novel is through eBooks, on the other.

So, how does this affect the novel? Personal interaction creates the mouldings in which we place characters. One need not shake hands with everybody they meet; however, simply noticing different personalities becomes a challenge when being Blackberried to the point of dependence, or when listening to an iPod while walking down the street. The more our senses are canalled through technological devises, the less we are to notice the peculiarities taking place around us.

During a recent trip to Japan, a friend and I were making our way through hoards of daily commuters in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district – truly a sight to see – when I took a moment to notice the happenings inside the train car. Everywhere I looked, I saw people – young, old, student, and business professional, even a child under five – staring intently at a cellular phone, a PSP, iPOD, or personal computer. This got me thinking; how many personal relationships would be spawned in this subway car, if only people would look up from their text messages long enough to meet a stranger?

Though we may never know the answer, this troubling addiction has become institutionalized and engrained in the nature of 21st Century communication. No longer is it one-on-one, face to face; it is more like face-to-interface! Created by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the World Wide Web, since going public in 1993, has grown from an innovative alternative, to life-support system. Commenting on the central role the internet plays, former US President Bill Clinton stated in his recent book, entitled Giving, that when he took office, the internet was home to ten websites. Today, he writes, there are about 50 million websites accessible to the public.

As the effectiveness and viability of the Internet to be used as a smart tool for business networking and communications became more apparent, its transformation process began, ushering in a new collaborative atmosphere to the global conversation; if two minds are better than one, how about 3 billion minds? In many ways, the Internet has facilitated the gathering forces of globalization, enabling conversations to begin in one place and end in another.

In the context of literature, the Internet has proved an effective method for self-publication. Through live journals, weblogs, and MySpace, anybody with a message can create a website, and begin contributing to the global conversation. In many ways they have created an entirely new domain for freelancers and news personal to report on the events taking place around us. What is more, Internet jobs can be conducted from home, and in the era of high energy cost, ditching the car and rush-hour commute may be the hallmark of the 21st Century job.

The idea of mass collaboration has become so popular; it is making its way to print media’s familiar haunt – the daily newspaper. An article entitled, How do you feel about this headline, appearing in The Toronto Star in July 2008, listed a new job posting: Citizen Journalist. This role, explains the article, will be facilitated by ‘a new tool launched by thestar.com that allows users to comment on stories. The goal is to make the news more interactive, more dynamic, more of an open discussion, instead of a static lecture.’

While the Toronto Star has made this collaborative effort a new addition, other publications base their entire being around global collaborative efforts. The best example of this is the photography magazine JPG. Its most recent issue, entitled Human Impact, and On the Go, advertises on the cover that ‘you can submit photos, write articles, and vote at jpgmag.com.’ The contents of the magazine – submitted by members who register for a free account on the internet - cover a breadth of humanity in photographs from across the globe. This type of effort spells out the appeal of mass collaboration: in one publication, there exists a number of different regional images from around the globe. Each contributor occupies a space on the magazine’s main website, which facilitates the high degree of sharing.

To inspire – and doubtless, expand its readership – the back of the magazine outlines the different areas of its content, and describes how new members can contribute. For example, the categories are: On the job; where you can interview and shoot someone with a cool job; WTF (you understand), where photographers can submit their weirdest photos – with descriptions; Where I’m At, which is dedicated to show and tell pieces about a contributors town, city or neighbourhood; and lastly, Nice to Meet You, where one can shoot and describe someone interesting. Each category is advertised on a cut-out card, with the intention of being stowed in a camera bag, and comes with bullet-point ideas to get you started. With over 489,179 submissions to jpgmag.com by 142, 568 members, and 11,594 submissions to issue 16 by 6,970 members, this collaborative take is quickly gaining momentum.

Just as the democratic process made us feel – at least a little more – comfortable with the political process, so to can mass collaboration make us feel comfortable with the life process. The more and more individuals feel connected to a story, event, process, or disaster as the case may be, the more and more people will choose to care. If you polled a majority of Canadians about how effective they think their vote is, I’m willing to bet all the money in my pockets and all the money in your pockets, that a majority feel their vote will not matter. Even though politicians use the internet to make themselves available for comments by their constituents, the use of the Internet in this way is, considering history, relatively new and its effectiveness in rallying politically active people has yet to be tested over a long enough period of time. This is to say nothing of how reluctant older crowds are to approach a computer, and as well, the most politically apathetic generation are young people who are coming-of-age in generation I.

So what is the point? Mass collaboration is fast becoming the medium of communications and business networking; it is also making its way into the literary world. For example, as an endnote, authors Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams attached to their book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, a website address where readers can involve themselves in the editing process of their work, and as well, can offer refinements to the arguments they make. Put another way; novels traditionally promote one way of looking at something, or to borrow the words of the Citizen Journalist job posting, are static lectures that offer little chance for collaborating with its creativity. In this sense, novels promote a method of learning that runs counter to the 21st Century experience.

Another standpoint, offered by Nicholas Carr in his article Is Google Making Us Stupid? written for the Atlantic, promotes that heavy internet usage is reprogramming the human brain in ways that deter our ability to read long works. He explains that ‘media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.’ The affect he says is the ‘mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.’ How does the Net affect mediums? Carr writes that ‘when the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is recreated in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed.’

So perhaps it goes without saying that the Internet’s centrality in the role of communications has altered the traditional image of the novel. The Internet is now pregnant with the latest weapon against the novel: the eBook. After all, why would you spend $32.99 on a hard cover novel, when you can download it for $5-10 at Project Guttenberg’s site for example?

Appearing on Rabble.ca, Wayne MacPhail’s article Living in the future with the book of books, describes the Sony Reader Digital Book. About the thickness of an iPod, and the appearance of a Moleskin notebook, MacPhail says that it ‘can store up to 160 average-length books. That means the Reader Digital Book is not really a book at all, it’s an uberbook. It can call up for display any of the thousands upon thousands of pages in its memory. You can bookmark a page, flip to a specific page and select books from your library with a simple menu.’ Its all-in-one nature will fit nicely into the modern image of convenience: maybe the Sony Digital Reader Book will be sold in the electronics department of your local grocery store!

Just as technology is moving literature away from traditional mediums, it is also popularizing new literary movements. In 1984, American poet Marc Smith created what he called Poetry Slam. He noted that ‘the very word poetry repels people. Why is that? Because of what schools have done to it. The slam gives it back to the people…we need people to talk poetry to each other. That’s how we communicate our values, our hearts, the things that we’ve learned that make us who we are.’

Smith’s Poetry Slam helped popularize the spoken word scene created by dynamic performers such as Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. In a sense, poetry slam was marinated in the early 1980s with the free-flow of jazz, and the attitude of hip-hop. As well, as dissents and political activists began to advertise their messages through these mediums, spoken word and poetry slam inspired new artists, such as Saul Williams, to pick up their pens.

However, while bringing a new level of cool to poetry, slam and spoken word carries literature further away from the archaic novel. Inasmuch as slam expressed the values that are important to communicate, it also embraced the evolution in communication’s mediums. This movement has grown and continues to grow because of how accessible and easy to procure, recording technology has become. One explanation for this is the essence of poetry slam is a freestyle quality that cannot be pinned down on a page. Instead, recorders are used to capture the evolving flow and raw emotions of slam. The trouble this leads to the novel is that recording software has long-since been made available to the everyday person. Nowadays it is easy to burn discs, or to create your own studio album with a recording devise.

While technology and science are making transitions in the name of energy efficiency, however, the influence of the Green Movement can also be seen as having negative impacts on the novel. We have seen how the Internet has turned reader’s attention from the blank page, to the web page; however changing environmental practices are also playing their part to facilitate this shift.

Since improvements were made to the technology of recycling, reduce, reuse, recycle has become a well-known slogan. Over the years, the idea of recycling has spawned new trends for the design and production of goods utilizing recycled materials. Many people can recall seeing compact disc jackets boast of being made from 100% recycled material. Using paper plates at the cottage used to be considered a crime, but has been vindicated due to the fact that most are made of recycled materials, and can be recycled themselves after usage.

Recycling has long been a function most offices partake in as well. More likely than not, one can recall seeing ‘think before you print’ signs above network printing stations, which institutionalizes the importance of reducing the amount of paper being wasted. The fact that more and more offices are placing emphasis on economical use of paper, makes the internet more important and the novel seem out of touch. Of course, one cannot ignore the fact that publishers also use recycled material for their novels, however, with the prominence the Internet has in the 21^st Century, getting rid of the novel out right may not be far off.

Love;

2007-04-26T21:22:00.000-04:00

Front-step kisses
and drive-in back seats
and caramel-corn retreats
between two sheets-
as we laugh until we weep,
or until we sleep.

something to chew on...

2007-02-01T21:50:00.000-05:00

not borrowed or blue, but something new...

If you could stare at something and not blink, what would it be?

What would you attempt if you knew you couldn't fail?

If it weren't for light, would it always be night?

Free speech: the ultimate distraction

2006-12-11T15:30:00.000-05:00

Usually this blog does not serve as my arena for rhetorical flushes of opinions that I intend anyone to adopt, but kids...that time has come.

While seated in the waiting room of the doctor's office one morning last week, I attempted to occupy myself by fixating on the television, since the View was on, I changed my mind and decided to read. While sifting through a pile of Good Housekeeping and US Weekly, and almost giving in to the fact that this particular doctor's office intended only to feed on the completely useless and mundane thus having nothing for me, I was delighted to find a Maclean's magazine with dog-eared pages staring up at me.

On the cover there was a picture of an African child, ravaged by Quashicore and wearing the tired, burdened face of a terrorized war-zone refugee. The point of the picture was to draw attention to the cover story inside about the latest element of the conflict in Darfur, in the Sudan. Of the many important topics facing the international community today, Darfur is absolutely near the top of the list.

While I feel that the resolution of this conflict is vital to the people of the Darfur region, and to the greater progression of the African Union, I'm writing for another purpose. The article begins on page thirty (or so) in the magazine, and after five pages, is interupted by...wait for it...Christmas 2006 holiday gift ideas. That's right...talking about today's important issues apparently has to come packaged with an intermission to remind us of a superficial holiday, where the 'haves' get more, and the impoverished are made to feel even worse then they already do.

After ten pages of advertisements for the color availabilty for IPods, chinos, and toy cars, the Darfur article continues. I realise that breaking up a coverstory is not a new thing, or a freak occurence, as magazines have to share column inches with other important issues, I just don't think that interupting a story on such an important issue is necessary to make way for advertisements. This is surprising to me coming from Maclean's magazine, but maybe not.

The question the editors have to ask themselves is of course, 'how best can we be the servents of two masters?' Everyone educated in the 'real world' knows that publications are paid for by advertising revenue, and editors and news directors have to hold the microphone and give ad-execs a reach-around at the same time, all the while presenting hard news that stabolizes, or increases a circulation. Circus show? Perhaps, depends on who you ask. Personally, I think this time they lost sight of the fact that the readers make the magazine not the other way around.

The people at Macleans have to realize that it is actions like this that fertilize the opinion that free speech is abused, and that advertisments are a waste of ink. Don't get me wrong, I like the Coke-a-Cola polar bears, but at least that's funny. Filling up advertising space should never come in the middle of cover stories that are trying to draw the public's attention to important issues. The editor's at Macleans need to realize the entitlement to free speach goes hand-in-hand with keeping it honest.

The article was about how rebels from waring tribes are crossing into neighboring Chad and are looting the homes of people that live there. This is the reality of a continent that needs all the support it can get, and I think North Americans are not only able to give that support, but if we consider ourselves the moral and political authorities, our news outlets should help cultivate that message, and not serve as greeting cards for the 'in-croud'.

The people are the magazine, and without us, there is no magazine!

this flight tonight...

2006-12-09T23:56:00.000-05:00

paper airplane, please come back again.
come down through the clouds,
before my very eyes.
arrive on time to my surprise, I'll meet you at the gate.
hopes and dreams have set with
the sun, as we lie awake over the sea.
Come down through the clouds,
come back to me.

New Birth

2006-12-03T10:38:00.000-05:00

My first face
as I glanced out
in space,
and starred at the
darkness beyond
the moon.
Orbiting the earth,
became flying
only to land;
floating only to
stand.
Late into the night
continued the flight,
over the rivers, oceans
and land.
O'Ryan's explosion
gave sight to the earth,
a distant star
untainted at birth,
a new face among
the crowd.

3 fingers pointing back

2006-12-03T10:35:00.000-05:00

verbal abuse
is no excuse,
to scratch an itch
with a trigger.

spray-paint the face,
destored in space
staring you back
in the mirror.

every you

2006-11-13T18:21:00.000-05:00

Every night,
I stay awake and listen
To the waves.
Invade my space and crash up against my ears.
Forgot his face,
Cause he hasn’t been around in years.
He returns again to disappear,
Before our eyes, starry night
In the clear.
Every day,
I thank the Gods that you’re okay.
Does your face hurt?
From where you landed
When you were falling down.
Is this our time and place to go,
Strike the match
And watch the glow.
Fools are we,
Who lie in the sea.
Casting stares into its depths.
We float,
But we want to sink.
Down to the bottom just to make us think.
About words we’d say,
If we came back to this day.
We found you sitting near,
The drive,
Beside the stairway to the basement.
Is this what they meant to say?
Blow kisses goodbye,
And call away the stars.
Light your lovers eyes,
With a spark from your flaming lips.
Let her feel your warmth,
you're floating away
in sinking ships...

passing time and space

2006-11-01T11:53:00.000-05:00

Kissed by the ocean,
and swallowed by the waves,
Footprints in the sands of time.
Wanderers we all,
pass under the sun,
finding the shelter we crave.

Buildings amass, and cathedrals mundane,
locked by gate and key;
voices of the insane.
Laughter forced a smile,
showed teeth of glittering white-
Be that which destroys,
or that which creates;
of Frankensteins or doves.

Dilute the real with spirit or poison,
whichever, to pass a day.
Tired and weary,
distorted and dreary,
blots of ink that link and bleed.
Passes on stages, from one to the next,
without though of danger or speed.

Lockit...

2006-10-30T20:56:00.000-05:00

hidden
secret
under-exposed.
darkened
hibrination
slumber
repose.
moisture
blurrs
vision
impaired.
silence
occured
hearing
dismantled.
brain
down
memory
low.
tonight
one
moon,
under
the
earth
I
go.

hopeful

2006-10-27T22:44:00.000-04:00

So let us lay here,
drowning in the fire light.
Listening to the waves meet the shore,
and part again.

This is where I leave you,
staring at the ocean.
Place in your memory,
come back to it again;
A keepsake of time,
echoing the rythm
of laughter and friends.

Sunrise so beautiful,
and tears;
What's left to recollect,
a stamp for all the years.
Voices in the graveyard,
are calling out your name.
you try to answer me,
it just dosen't feel the same.

Wear a smile

2006-10-27T13:55:00.000-04:00

Hide away,
listen to the angry mob,
speaking in different tongues.
What will they say,
when they see the sparkle,
in your eyes;
rise up and fade away?
Last night,
won’t happen every day.
Their turn to say,
that it wasn’t their fault,
because it never really is;
doesn’t make this nightmare okay,
like the rain that won’t go away.
Tonight, tonight,
this has all been about a dream.
Things are just as they seem,
replay in my head a thousand times.
Keeps skipping on the track,
where you were lost,
but I took you back.
Read a book,
and count the pages as you turn them.
Does it add up to your disappointment?
Was this your idea,
of pain and torture.
Or will it move you from this torpor?
Isolated in repose,
you changed out of your clothes.
And dawned the features,
of a dharma bum.
Take it back,
came from a book by Kerouac.
Your mind is traveling in circles;
replay the track.
Recordings of your voice taped back,
when you wore a smile.

Subdue the fever

2006-10-14T21:44:00.000-04:00

Give me this day, the last day of your life. Walk with me through green fields, hands holding tight. On to memories where we left them, by eyes of passers by. We’ll walk under the moon, and comment on the stars. Jets over our heads and the red ball of Mars. High atop the cliff, over looking the houses down below, our pulses raise with pleasure, on lookers from the crowd forming below. Look into the mirror of the sea. What does your reflection look like in the red light? Of scars and burns, another day spent doping up our innocence and subduing the fever. Do you know your neighbor? Can you tell him that he’s going to die tomorrow, sipping on black comedy and floor disasters. This is today, what will your death bring to us?

REM cars...

2006-09-26T18:51:00.000-04:00

streched out head to toe,
dream's hand catches me while I sleep.
turning covers to and fro,
without question, I've decended in deep.
stars twinkle and burn, and light up the sky,
throwing glare and fragments to obscure my eye.
floating above the earth, in a catatonic state,
drops of wax fall from candles at the wake.
the sun and heavens, play the field for the stars,
we slip between them in REM cars.

this call

2006-09-18T23:18:00.000-04:00

last night, i woke you up on the telephone.
said I had gone out on my own,
can you take this call from heaven?
I'd seen your face on a picture downtown,
were you wondering if I was still banging around.
I had cried myself a river and proceeded to drown,
but would you reach your hand in for me.

I was crying out for the attention I crave,
some people are great, and some meet their grave.
can you take this call from heaven?
Telling you about the trouble I was in,
could you take me in your arms and make me whole again.
I was wondering was it possible by now,
could we sit down and write the story of how,
you and me, and it was all that it could be.
We walked right down, and laid beneath the sea.
Can you take this call from heaven?

We were on the mountain top, counting shooting stars.
Saw the big black sky, the red dot was Mars,
got lost in the milky way.
You turned to me and with a tear in your eye.
in front of all of this, you started to cry.
And you left me wondering why.
Hold my hand, cause I have something to say,
we never knew it then, but things are better this way, and hey...

can you take this call from heaven?

a birthday message...

2006-09-17T17:25:00.000-04:00

Covered by the stiffness of the night, I walked the streets I used to know. Every corner screamed a memory, every face brought about a name. The orange glow that leaped from the windows of the old stomping grounds seemed comforting against the breeze. I crossed my arms and tightened myself up, as the pain of memories abandoned began to overtake me.

There were lines that snaked along the street like rivers. Among them, jovial faces gleamed like gold in the sand. These were the times made special by the gentle touch of a friend, or by the telling of story experienced by all. We were laughing about it then, and each knew this feeling would never cease.

Year passes year, and before you stop to realize it, the image staring back in the mirror no longer reminds you of yourself. You've slipped, but you're hanging on, motivated by the memories yet to be made. And, for a moment that seems more pure than any other, you look over your shoulder at your friends...and smile.

demons

2006-09-12T11:27:00.000-04:00

It's all in a dream, things are not what they seem.
The feel and pulse of a new living thing,
crawling deeply underneath my weathered skin.
It's shadow lurks beneath me when I crawl,
pulls me down to the depths where I fall.
The fog has set in filling my head,
with answers to questions I dislike and dread.
My likeness in the mirror has not one head but two,
the unsettling difference between me and you.
It's path grows for miles like a cancer,
unravelling hope, and prayers for an answer.
These things haunt me throughout the night,
between these two sensations,
is the war that I fight.

there was...

2006-09-10T13:02:00.000-04:00

There was a field, where we would dance in the rain.
There was the porch where I used to sit, screaming your name.
And you ran away from me.

There was an image of you, vanished much too late.
There was your face, red with the ravishing color of hate.
I was your dream.

There in the meadow, when your heart skipped a beat.
There was a poem in my head, I knew it complete.
The stars provided the light.

There were good-byes and tears and over the years.
There were good days and bad days, and hot ones and cold,
and some were so much wetter.

Memories missed...

2006-09-06T15:29:00.000-04:00

Close your eyes tight and jump from this cliff.
The memories made and the memories missed. Scream your name with silent gestures.
Their shadows dance on the wall of your epitaph.
We jumped high from this dream,
and landed in it's ashes.
This broken home stands empty.

River of Tears

2006-09-05T17:56:00.000-04:00

a river of tears flows underneath
wind-swept bridges.
the fingerprints of small hands
adorn her ridges.
this place they came, to cool the burn
of hate, of poison, they wait their turn.
to see life as it was before
evil cast it's spell.
to quiet the screams
of a fire breathing yell.

dream stare

2006-09-05T13:44:00.000-04:00

- a new song

I took your photograph, in black and white.
And hid behind the stage, out of sight.
It was a rush, a thrilling blur. You were never there,
I only thought you were.
Your red eyes burned right through the paper. They caught me waiting,
in the background of this dream stare.

I held your photograph, with shivering hands. And marked it on the back,
with black pen. I knew you needed me,
but couldn't do it then. Those judging eyes,
calling me again.
Your eyes burned right through the paper. They caught me waiting,
in the background of this dream stare. Took the light away from my eyes,
left me running away from the dark.

I placed your photograph, under my bed at night. My mouth was open then,
and you climbed right in. Took the words right out of my mouth,
stole the screams right from my lips. I couldn't move away,
you locked me in right from the hips. Your face was like a black hole,
and it held me and sucked me in.
I couldn't escape the merky afterglow.

Your red eyes burned right thought the paper. They caught me waiting,
in the background of this dream stare. They held me there,
while I was burned up limb by limb.

in the end

2006-08-28T02:33:00.000-04:00

so you were lonely,
i it heard through the phone.
I left you next to disaster,
while you were waiting for the answer.
From a voice that calls you,
from beyond the grave.
You didn`t know it was me.
I didn`t feel the same.

Walking through these meadows,
and beside these homes.
Your greatest fear was that,
you`d be alone.
If you looked up to the sky,
you`d see.
That stranger hiding out in the clouds,
is me.

So now the story`s over,
you`re at the end of the road.
You feel so much better,
unburdened by this heavy load.
This radio still belts out your name,
it`s tongue is dretched with your poison.
It`s got no way to run.

the message

2006-08-21T04:05:00.000-04:00

I wrote this while sitting on a bench in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. A wonderful place to think about doing things better.

For a moment, evil held the world in it's hand, and let life slip between its fingers. Shadows of the people are all that remain, in this place, their final stage of passing.
In the background, a bell tolls, attempting to bring them home, as a group of worshipers call to their spirits. They see not the light cast from the peace flame.
They know this fortune cannot come to pass. Much less their loved ones returned. The powers of the world are against them, but still their mouths move in prayer as one.

They look toward the heavens for answers that may never come. For the silver lining that was once painted black with the scars of burns and the horrors of their nightmare. Peace blossums like a flower from the dust and the ruble, and must be aided by the blissful touch of a mother's love.

In the shadow of war, let a great beakon shine down on us all, so that our flowers can grow once more.

Japan...arrival

2006-08-15T10:48:00.000-04:00

August 15-6pm.

After a twelve hour flight, and a couple of pictures of the Alaskan mountians, the Boeing 474-400 aircraft landed in Narita, Japan. After a 1 hour train ride, I arrived in Toyko.

What`s amazing about the city is the amount of people, large crouds, moving unimpeded through narrow streets that reflected the glow of the many bright neon signs high above. It`s strange to be the outsider in a foreign place. It seems that everywhere I walk, the eyes of strangers follow. Before I take a step, they know where I will go, or so it seems.

My first food experience was a sushi bar. The setup was unique. All of the chairs were placed in a circle, and in front, a track brought around the food the resturant served. There were many different types of sushi, not that I can tell you what they were, but nonetheless, I welcomed the fresh taste of athentic Japanese sushi.

More to come. Tomorrow Mike and I head for Kyoto.

mystic flight

2006-08-14T00:47:00.000-04:00

Through the air at night,
a mystic wonder.
Sound passes over the houses,
rattling them like thunder.

Closer to the heavens,
than ever before.
Grab the stars with your hands,
listen to the children roar.

In jaded heaps the passengers creep,
through the gate and into the world.
To change it one by one,
each a vision inspired.
While evil took another step,
the villagers grew tired.

Frozen heels

2006-08-14T00:17:00.000-04:00

I walk this ground on frozen heels,
and through a forest of trees.
At night I hear your voice scream,
the sounds brings me to my knees.
No blanket to trap escaping heat,
nor veil to block the sun.
This place, this rythm, these echoed voice through time,
but thinking only of one.
Your eyes in front, but cannot see,
the vision of me is blurred.
A life of peace, of freedom of speech,
most certainly seems absurd.