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Showing posts from September, 2009

funf marks five

Actually, not a ton of funf around the homestead lately, with C being so nauseous and uncomfortable all the time, and then getting no sleep. Poor turnip. But I've got the fridge down to something almost spartan, very clean and organized, and filled with loads of leftovers. And then tonight after work I'll start cleaning out my studio. This is the grand scope of my projects these days. The bills above were rescued from C's great purge the weekend before last, when she was like Stalin in the editing room. I saved a little box of these, with a couple even hand-stitched back together.

things that go in the mail

Sending this painted journal along to Cara in Montreal. There's a piece of writing that goes with it ... Yesterday was my birthday. I awoke with a sore throat. My tongue felt clotted, my voice felt scraped away. I went downstairs to my dark, cold kitchen and started a fire in the stove. Standing there, in those shadows winking darkly, I became aware of what a lump I was, how little I was aware of, how little I was thinking, how I was becoming used to not thinking, to living in this city of the non-thinking, the unthinking, and how, while this allowed me to go about my business, it made all the more painful those random moments of clarity, where the brain dot blinks insistently, becoming almost visible, like the sun behind thick cloud, life’s ambitions pulsing bleakly. * * * * * Today was a lot like that, very closed in its own darkness. You'd think that would be my kind of day, but sometimes I need the sun as much as the next guy. * * * * * Got a lovely thank-you email

today is the hardly the tomorrow I was promised yesterday

girls at the party, one and two ; ink on paper (pages from a text book), 6.5 x 8.25, illustrations for a story. * * * * * Let's just get this out of the way first, shall we? No. Peanut. Yet. * * * * * And our Spike the Punch cabaret on Friday night went over very well, thanks. Billeh was a live wire as a host and all the readers got up there and honestly delivered, all of them thoughtful and entertaining and giving the audience a real taste of the bigger stories they had to tell. C and I didn't get to as many festival events as we would have liked, having to play it day by day, according to how she was feeling, but we did enjoy a few and both of us were inspired and impressed by the success of the whole thing. The organizers, the volunteers, the writers ... all did a fabulous job. * * * * * And now, back to this business of waiting. Peanut is being very bad, and C is getting very impatient (and nauseous, and uncomfortable), and just wants to meet her, so she can le

reading tonight / shameless plug

Tonight is my reading at the writer's festival . Here's the official blurb ... 19. Spike the Punch: A Late-Night Literary Cabaret The fabulously irreverent poet Billeh Nickerson acts as master of ceremonies for this after-hours cabaret of out-there poetry, short fiction, and genre-busting nonfiction. Nova Scotia poet Jeanette Lynes, Doug Wright Award-winner Mariko Tamaki and Montreal author of Stripmalling , Jon Paul Fiorentino join local poet Jennifer Londry, flash-fiction blogger DJ Berger, and new novelist Andrew Binks for a night on the edge. Holiday Inn Waterfront Friday, September 25 $10 6th Floor 11:00 p.m. - 12:30 a.m. Cash Bar So: you've got a stage full of writers and a bar at the back. What more do you need? Plus it's C's birthday. And since she can't drink, she's more than happy to see you tip one for her. * * * * * We were at the festival last night, for the It's a Mystery! event with Howard Engel and Louise Penny. There was a gr

knock on, captain crazy

Wink away, you crazy little cupcake. Just some small 'c' craziness fun last night, I'd just be drifting off to sleep when C would have to get up again, or Ernie would attack the mirror, or a ghost would blow in and go boo , which happened at around midnight when C asked me if I was awake and did I hear that knocking at the front door? I lifted my head. Actually, yes. I do hear it. So I threw on some clothes and went downstairs and opened the door, C dancing around like some moony turnip sprite behind me, and there was no one there. And no one in the street. Then the light to the back door came on. So I went through that door, and no one was there either, which was hardly a surprise, since the yard is fenced in and the light is sensitive enough to be set off by an aggressively-sized spider. I went to check the garage anyway. Nothing. This morning I did a walk around and still nothing. Everyone says this is such good prep for when Peanut comes and we get *no* sleep, which

superman

Funny how early one's reading tastes are set. No Peanut yet. The guy in our writing group had his baby. The guy in the office next door -- whose wife was due the same day -- had his baby. Shouldn't we be next in the batting order? No worries. We're always late for everything. Watched Gran Torino last night. Clint Eastwood growls around, calling everyone a zipperhead. Then he gives away his car. Finished The Road . One of the best books I've ever read. Incredibly bleak though, and no superheroes, if that's what you're looking for.

not much

Someone still has the same eating style. Nothing going on, still no Peanut. Burning the way to the end of my cold, all that meds and pretend meds I took, not feeling sick but sweating through my clothes. C and I had a lively discussion about open windows and my reluctance to sit by them. She says there's no correlation between cold temperatures and sickness (a charming fact I think they discovered in places like Buchenwald), to which I said I don't care, all I know is that the October day when you find yourself to be the last person wearing shorts is the day you get sick. Full stop.

guess who

I mean, who else could it be? You could put her in sunglasses and an Afro wig and I'd still say, Uh, yeah ... that's C. Gosh, what gave it away? The Flashdance arrangement of the shirt, the pliable cat on her lap, the string necklace (always a nice stretchy-neck touch), the utter squeezy crazy rapture of having a cat in her sweaty little hands? I had to rescue this picture from the trash this weekend, after C went on one of her flinging binges. Just keep a small box of some good ones, I said. For Peanut. We can even make a little album. Well, that prompted some stomping. I don't *want* to make an album! Why should *I* do the work? *She* can do the work! Uh, okay. But we're going to need a very tiny whip. * * * * * Still had a nice day Saturday, despite me coming down with a cold and then C sitting me in the highest-traffic aisle of a restaurant (left to her own devices she will always put us by a bathroom or a drafty window, I constantly have to be prepared to sa

waiting ...

No news, just waiting for the good news. And look, the sun just came out. Someday, this will be C. Only the porch will be more stretchy-neck.

bon voyage

cigar-tin story #50 Giving over a whole whack of cigar-tin stories to Oscar at Novel Idea today, as he'll be selling them –- alongside all the participating authors' books -- at the upcoming writer's festival . It's always a kick to see something that started as a spark in your head and your hands come out as something packaged and sealed and laid out for public consumption. Have a good trip.

Eleven years ago ...

Eleven years ago, on my thirtieth birthday, I sat looking out the window at another end of the evening, at another winter night in Winnipeg, at a very particular kind of February blackness, when the word 'home' looms as large anything in one's mind, and there is no ambition, because you've spent the day pulled in as hard as you can to yourself, against the thirty-below weather, running from door to door. And I thought I should try to look beyond all that. So I made a promise to myself, that I should start writing, I mean really trying to write, to engage it straight on, as something I just do . And if I did this, if I truly worked at it, then there was no reason why I shouldn't have a book published by the time I turned thirty-five. And to hedge my bets I'd send out illustrations with every story, and get those published too, because I had ambitions there as well (almost everyone who goes through a graphic design program wants to grow up to be an illustrator so

still waiting

cigar-tin story #49 Peanut continues to take her time. Pokey kid. C has a doctor's appointment today, and I told her it would be perfectly fine if she went into labour in his office. It's like pulling into the mechanic's just as your car breaks down, I said. I don't think she was listening. C's not up to much conversation in the morning, when she's waddling around the house with a cat under each arm, looking like a hairbrush could save her life ...

too much

cigar-tin story #48 Too much nature this morning ... the dead mouse so neatly displayed on our welcome mat, looking like a cat before the fire, paws stretched out, the wound in its side almost discreet ... then a series of cobwebs on the walk to work, there are days I seem to hit all of them, no matter how carefully I avoid any trees by the sidewalk ... Kingston really is the City of Spiders. Watching the first season of Extras this weekend (thanks, Jill). It's another Ricky Gervais vehicle that feeds off the embarrassment and misery of its characters (much like The Office ). In this scene we see the motivations of a not very Shakespearean Patrick Stewart.

It's a Friday kind of Friday.

C and I went out to see Ted Hollister's Cow last night. As we were reminded several times, the price of admission was only $10 because they were still working a few wrinkles out. No matter. It was funny enough and, whenever things got slow, Nikki Payne would start screaming obscenities through her lisp. Or just hump something. Some classic Nikki from her CTV special ... here . * * * * * Further to my post yesterday, here's a great Neil MacDonald article about our fun, fun neighbours to the south. * * * * * Ten days to go ...
cigar-tin story #47 ... This one's a little rough around the edges, which is cool. Listening to the radio this morning, Obama trying to sell his health care reforms, standing there thinking, Why are they so nuts down there? . Everything is a crisis, everything is a overheated, everything is a button behind glass, just waiting to explode. Yes, I think I *will* take my machine gun to the rally today, thank you. Yes, I *would* like to give money to this group dedicated to proving that the president isn't really one of us. That he was born somewhere else. Where, I wonder. Mars? What are they so afraid of? That the bottom 10% will get health care coverage? I really don't understand, and I'm not just saying that for effect. I mean, we have Alberta, but come on .

in-between days

I'd turn my back on him, too. Wednesday, into September, no Peanut yet, writer's festival not for two weeks, Survivor doesn't start until the 17th. C is bored beyond belief, phoning me at work to make a case for new blinds in the kitchen. Out of everything you could be thinking about right now, *that* is what bubbles up to the top? I ask. Yef, she says. It is. Can you at least think about it? Just for kicks I went after a wasp nest this morning but that bomb/foam stuff just kind of gooped and fell off. Round Two tomorrow. The real deal are these glass traps , if you're lucky enough to find them in stock. C and I watched one in action on the weekend and they are high-efficiency killers. One thing they haven't invented yet is a control device for Queen's students, who have descended in their usual over-cologned, over-rich, over-protected swarms on Kingston. They are truly the beautifully stupid. People always shake their heads at the next generation but I have

Tuesday is an elephant.

cigar-tin story number 46 But what a nice long weekend ... like three days of summer, only more reasonable. On Monday afternoon we went over to Brian and Janet's to visit their pool. Always a pleasure. Brian was long-faced about his broken/torn foot, and the ridiculous cast he has to wear for it (something between a moon boot and a shoe for the retarded), and the fact that his sun-filled tennis-golf lifestyle has been replaced by staying up late just to catch the end of The Brown Bunny . And all because he was running to catch the phone. Who could have been calling that he was so desperate to talk to? Hmmm. Does Chloë Sevigny answer calls from brain waves?

Sunday

Sunday, up around 7, cereal, coffee, reading the NYT. C can't bend over anymore so I had to rub lotion all over her legs. Ernie jumped up on the kitchen table and was rewarded with several short but good blasts from the water bottle. The little girls next door are camping out in the back yard and giggling away. The sun is out. Yesterday we went for a long, looping walk in the neighbourhood, looking at some not-yet-open open houses, sitting in the park, window shopping and then over to the Screening Room to catch the matinee of Moon . What a great little movie. No vampires or gunfights or slow-motion of any kind. Just a story about a lone astronaut assigned an energy-collection station on the moon. It's there until the 10th. Afterwards we went out for supper and then walked home in the dusk.

oh, what a lonely boy

cigar-tin story number 45 Have you been following this murky story about Michael Bryant and the death of the bicycle courier? Somehow I don't think we'll ever get the whole truth on this one. Right away I knew I recognized his name from more than just the news and sure enough, it turns out he gave the main address at C's convocation from her Ryerson publishing program. He was a pretty good speaker, too.

cigar-tin story #44

One of the tins on sale at the Kingston Writersfest (this September 23rd-26th at the Holiday Inn Harbourfront) through the festival bookseller Novel Idea . There will be about twenty cigar-tin stories for sale ... each one unique, with an original story inside, and always packaged with various other treats -- little notebooks, cards, fortunes, etc. And, unless C pops a peanut that very night, I'll be reading at a festival event called Spike the Punch: A Late-Night Literary Cabaret on Friday, September 25th from 11 to 12:30 pm. * * * * * Tried to get C to read Poor Sailor . Took it out from the library and brought it home and left it on the dining room table for weeks. A tiny book. Almost entirely pictures. But no luck. And all this while she's desperate for something to do -- just sitting around, being big, waiting for Peanut. But still, no. The thing about C is, if she doesn't want to do something then she will simply not do it. There is no power that can make her.

scene of the something

Damn cookie monster. I saw an accident on the way to work today. Well, I heard it first. I was walking about a block away when I heard a short screechcrunch . It was hardly anything. Then I came up to the corner of Charles and Montreal and there they were. One car accordianed in the front, the second with its driver's door caved in. Everyone was out and seemed okay. Other people were standing around. Traffic slowed down, took a long look, then went around and sped away, some drivers still staring in the rear view mirror.

And now it's September.

cigar-tin story #43 This is the one of the tins which will be on sale at the Kingston Writersfest (this September 23rd-26th at the Holiday Inn Harbourfront) through the festival bookseller Novel Idea . There will be about twenty cigar-tin stories for sale ... each one unique, with an original story inside, and always packaged with various other treats -- little notebooks, cards, fortunes, etc. And, unless C pops a peanut that very night, I'll be reading at a festival event called Spike the Punch: A Late-Night Literary Cabaret on Friday, September 25th from 11 to 12:30 pm.