monsters, imagined

To the amazement of many, I've been reading a lot lately. C always has great sport with this, mocking the "three words -- oh, is your brain tired now?" little bits I read each night. But it adds up. Here's two recently finished books most fitting for a Halloween weekend.

The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson: Gosh, Lou Ford is a nice guy. Corny, sure, but this is Texas, after all, and a deputy sheriff should always have some pearls of wisdom handy. What he shouldn't have is a taste for beating prostitutes to death, or shooting people in the mouth. Or framing people for murder, and then murdering them in turn. Ah, but that's all down to "the sickness", isn't it? Or maybe he's just a hellishly intelligent monster. Who cares? It's a classic read.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith: If you like your narrators to smile like you, and talk like you, and do a crackerjack job of forging your signature, then you'll probably like Tom Ripley. Of course, if he's acting like this, it means he really likes you, too. Not only that, but he's probably planning on killing you, and then assuming your identity. Especially if you wear the same shirt size. Again, what's not to like?

little birds

Challenging days for chickie lately: a bit of a perfect storm of cold, teething and shots. Kept her home yesterday because the daycare caught her out with a wee fever; the trouble was, she'd just been at the doctor's getting checked out (she's fine, just this meaningless cough that hangs around forever), and then getting some shots. Of course the daycare gives you this form so you can go back to the doctor and get a signature under the suggestion that it's all down to the shots -- which would only take half a day's worth running around. Better just to keep her at home, and keep it low key. The drool from the teething is rather ridiculous anyway; yesterday saw two baths and at least four soaking shirts, these slick little pools scattered at random around the house, like it's been raining inside.

* * * * *

Found this at my desk this morning. It's from the printer we deal with. I had three reactions:

a) My coworker is *not* doing all the work. In fact, I'd be amazed if he was doing *any* work (or active thought); his prime directive is simply to eat as much pie as humanly possible, and then talk about how good it is, with his mouth full.

b) My sense of responsibility is nowhere -- obviously. I like to think of it as a little sailing ship, drifting, devoid of crew, lost at sea. Anyone who knows me knows at least *that*.

c) Printers are pricks, with all the sensibilities of a soccer hooligan running a nunnery; no wonder I tell everyone that all the fuck-ups are their fault.

* * * * *

And then this arrived in my mailbox yesterday, looking glum but still charming: a little painting from my blogging friend Krista B, who recently fled the Kingston nest for the wilds of BC. Thank you, Krista -- it has a good spot on my desk even as I type this.

codes

integrabile_reale; black and red India ink on paper (page from an old math text book).

* * * * *

Walking home from the studio Sunday afternoon when I noticed a pair of sneakers hanging from one of the power lines which crosses our street. Is this code for something? According to the internet, this is called shoe tossing (or "shoefiti"), and it might mark the location as a place where you can score drugs. It might also mark the end of the school year, or an upcoming marriage. It might be a more elegant form of bullying. It might also mean nothing.

Yes, I am officially not with it, now that I have to look up this sort of thing. On the internet.

And I meant to tell C about when I came in the door but of course she immediately started complaining about the furniture or the blinds or our rotation around the sun or something and my mind was laser zapped.

But I did remember a few days later.

"Hey, did you see those shoes hanging on the power line over the street?" I asked, all ready to get into a conversation about it.

"Yeah yeah, those have been there for a year," C said, going up the stairs with her crossword and glass of wine.

* * * * *

Three girls of that no-idea age (could be twelve, could be fifteen, I have no idea), wearing enormous witches hats and enough spandex and big belts to make them look like deep-sea divers for Fashion Week, three girls plodding down the sidewalk.

"Oh, I can't stand that bitch," said one.

"I know," said another. "That's why I hope she gets knocked out."

Oh. Do girls really knock each other out these days? I've seen girls fight before, and it's always been this fury of hair and teeth and drunken line dancing. Nobody was ever in danger of being knocked out.

* * * * *

Coming down Queen, seven forty-something in the morning, beamy thin sun in my face and everything sharp and cold, when I see this girl cross the street farther down, then coming up the sidewalk towards me. Cocktail dress, tiny sweater, cigarette held out to the side. She had to use the other hand to keep pulling down her dress over her bare legs. Would not look up, not in a million years, not if her life depended on it.

the things they carried

Wherein we're all walking variations of the same path, although some more stylishly than others.

* * * * *

Downtown the other night, and it was richly littered with homeless people. Unexpected -- it had getting colder all day, and filled with more dust, and every so many blocks I found myself trying to turn my head away from some kind of industrial stink, something like diesel only I imagined it in thick red and leaking, the air you could feel getting colder and drier, and I imagined, too, that even the homeless would be seeking shelter. But there they were, manning all their stations, and two of their number were especially interesting.

The first guy I'd seen before. In fact, the first time I saw him, he didn't seem homeless at all. Quite a good looking guy, actually. Youngish. But that first time he'd been smoking a little too determinedly, and then there was the muttering, and the pacing in little circles. This night he had an eyepatch in fluorescent silver. He'd ask people passing by for money and then say, Sorry. He asked me and I waved him away -- I only give to the Salvation Army and the old guys in front of the liquor store (and then only the ones who don't make up stories about bus fare). He said, Sorry.

The second guy I'd seen before, too. I'd already nicknamed him: Jesus. He looked a lot more like Jesus that first time I saw him in the park: all thinness and hair and half-nakedness, all that blank, peaceful sauntering around. But I'd seen him several times since, and on every occasion his circumstances seemed to be improving. One day I saw him looking like a tourist, in a new Hawaiian shirt, sitting on a bench with a coffee, cigarette, and newspaper. Watching traffic. On this night he was almost fashionable, with aviator sunglasses and a ski jacket and pants pulled up and tied around the knee with nylon rope, so that they looked like pumpkin pants. Christ, Jesus, I thought, you could have been a runway conquistadore.

None of the other homeless guys were that interesting.

post with the most

O Marilyn: some like it hot, I guess.

A nice review of Punishing Ugly Children by Lauren Kirshner (author of Where We Have to Go) in the newest issue of Quill & Quire. A quote:

Berger's writing can be sharp and funny, especially when describing the discomfort of forced social relations. Though the collection has moments of over-writing that obscure more than they reveal, these serve only to remind the reader where Berger's finest storytelling lies -- in his depictions of people doing the best they can under strange circumstances, often to surprising and compelling ends.

* * * * *

A rejection slip from The Paris Review. But somehow it doesn't feel bad, somehow it feels like a *classy* rejection slip. Anyway, I should know better than to send them stories about alternate worlds. Those classy bastards.

* * * * *

Now who *doesn't* like mail from Singapore? I asked C why our stamps can't be this interesting, and she said something about how these countries make their stamps like art, like something to be collected and sold. "But that still doesn't explain why *we* can't do the same thing," I said. "Is there any more wine in the house?" she asked. "Your schnapps gives me gas."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: my friend from Singapore is immensely talented.

* * * * *

I have a story in the new Whitewall Review. It's about a superhero who becomes a supervillain. This is the stuff my dreams are made of.

a little less conversation, a little more action

Oona and I went to the park the other day, while C was taking a nap (read: sleeping one off). Oona is a fierce libertarian; if there's anything she's about, it's absolute free will. So I let her run rampant. She tottered around, abusing handfuls of leaves and talking gibberish to ghosts.

* * * * *

The pants were bought by C's mom for Catherine's daughter Evangeline, so they have some sentimental value. I like them because of how forgiving they are; I mean, you could hide a sheep in there. When do I get to wear pants like that?

O that's right: when I'm old.

whinging wednesday

the young saints dream in colour; soap print with acrylic varnish on Rives BFK paper.

the young saints dream in colour (2); soap print with acrylic varnish on Rives BFK paper.

Two prints for artstream's upcoming print show (IPS3). Soap prints are an extremely fussy type of monoprint; the upside is that the learning curve is nearly a flat line (important for me, most days), you don't need much in the way of materials and the effort cleans up rather nicely (it is soap, after all).

* * * * *

A bit bleary coming into work today. Warm morning, sifting dark. Cars went by like shapes made of sound, like shadows growling by. I felt like I was following a tunnel.

Could be a long day. Most days my legs are so tired that I could just find a nice spot and sit down and stay there, start throwing bread crumbs to the birds. Today my elbow is killing me ... I must of have banged it on the night table in my sleep (either that or C is up to her predawn 'jokes' with the pliers again).

* * * * *

Why are people so alarming? More and more it's like closing time at the zoo, and I'm wandering around, watching the seething exhaustion and struggling to understand before they throw me out. In a hallway up on the fifth floor where I work they have a giant flatscreen where it's permanently set to some kind of astronaut channel. With the sound off. So when you walk by there's always some grinning astronaut on, some floating version of happiness. And I think, That's it, you just have to escape orbit.

* * * * *

Wednesday. If it was a channel then it would look like this.

fun with C

A surprisingly popular Prime Minister. Astonishing, in fact.

* * * * *

Last night I made string pie. It's a delicious dish -- deep and flavourful and layered with heat, perfect for a fall evening -- but it's not one that can be eaten quickly, and so it invites conversation. Conversation with C.

Did you see that poll about which prime ministers were most popular? I asked.

No, replied C, looking around for a cat. Was it on Facebook?

As a matter of fact it was. Guess which prime minister is considered most popular?

C shrugged. There were no cats around. I don't know. Laurier?

I almost choked. LAURIER!!?? If you asked ten people on the street who Laurier was, five would think he was a hockey player and four would think he discovered Hudson Bay.

C was thinking about how much alcohol might still be in the house. Okay, she said, Kim Campbell?

KIM CAMPBELL??!! Are you serious!!?? She was prime minister for about five minutes and she wasn't even elected!

Yeah, C said, wondering what vanilla extract might taste like. Wasn't she deputy prime minister or something? Isn't that how she became prime minister?

What the hell are you talking about??!! Deputy prime minister! Yes, that deputy minister -- always lurking around in the shadows, just waiting for the prime minister to catch a bullet so he can seize power! We're not Americans, you know. We don't shoot people in motorcades, and nobody gets sworn into office on Air Force One.

Kim Campbell was a woman, C said, looking pleased with herself (and thinking: Now I deserve a drink!).

Yeah, you're right, I said. You got me there.

Oona Berger: scam artist

Oona's artwork from daycare. I think this one's called Death of the Three Little Pigs. Or Death of the Three Filthy Little Pigs. Or Death of the Three Filthy Little Communist Pigs. Or something. It's either that or Pretty Red Flowers I Love You ... I can never remember these kind of things. Anyway: great reds, kid.

This one's a bit more in the abstract-expressionist school. It's about a bullfight or a traffic accident or the end of the Japanese empire. Or something. Who the hell knows what these kids get up to at daycare? Bloody communists. Also: I have some doubts about the signature.

if the future is confusion, then i'm already there

I need things explained to me. Thank you.

* * * * *

Because my eyes can be packed with sand sometimes -- which has the effect of making me a bit thick -- and because I'll never be a hipster (what is kale, anyway?), I was a bit lost as to the point of the Douglas Coupland article in The Globe and Mail this weekend (A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years). I *think* it was supposed to be funny. Or mildly funny. Was it supposed to be funny? I honestly don't know. Could someone tell me, please? I'm serious.

The accompanying artwork was an awful start: it was like a sample collage from Photoshop 2.0. And then the text was all over the place. Some points were strong and self-explanatory ("You may well burn out out on the effort of being an individual" -- yep, already there), some were reasonable and expected ("People will stop caring how they appear to others" -- *well* ahead of the curve on that one) and some were humorous in a corduroy-jacket kind of way ("IKEA will become an ever-more-spiritual sanctuary" -- uhm ... sure, ha ha). But the rest was either baffling ("The built world will continue looking more and more like Microsoft packaging"), derivative -- in this case from Radiohead, who referenced that cat tied to a stick about a million years ago -- ("You'll spend a lot of your time feeling like a dog leashed to a pole outside the grocery store -- separation anxiety will become your permanent state"), or just plain dumb ("North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989"). There was a glossary as well, explaining things like 'Guck Wonder' (?) but I didn't have much heart for it.

The Globe is *really* going for broke these days: all full-colour pictures and ultra-brite stock and brand new, brand name columnists (Jeanne Becker, anyone?) and hell, more power to them, I hope they make it. Run rabbit run. But I also hope they keep some of the old Globe's sense of quality control in the process (on an up note, Katrina Onstad's article about the death throes of American Apparel was as smart and sharp as anything).

Frankie says Relax, it's not the *real* eighties.

Is this was nostalgia feels like? Like a deadened version of heartburn?

At the grocery store closest to the university, standing in lines crooked with hot-faced kids, I see the eighties have returned. Or almost.

Yes, I see the clothes. I see the baseball tees, the sack dresses. The headbands. The overalls with the cuffs rolled up. And yes, I recognize the Thompson Twins on the sound system. I remember the female part of that group, how she'd hide herself under enormous hats or searing haircuts, and then layers and layers of clothes. She didn't want to be an object, she said.

I see all these kids who look like something that I'm meant to recognize, but they don't really look like any version of myself from twenty years ago. Instead they look a lot better than that.

Their choices are so much more calculated. Mine were blind and off-the-rack. During the real eighties, we all just wore the same thing, because that seemed to be all there was. Anyone who didn't had to go to some lengths to be that way, and therefore was trying too hard. They were freaks, and back then freaks (or nerds) were *definitely* not cool.

And the off-the-rack stuff we had was not very good. It wasn't layered and form-fitting the way these kids look now. Instead you wore it either really loose or really, really tight.

And there was so much acrylic. Yes: where are the acrylic sweaters? You just can't cherry-pick the good stuff, you little bastards. I want to see you in suffocating acrylic, in awful generic patterns, with your sleeves constantly bunched up on the upper arm (and constantly falling down).

And where is the abused hair? The scorched perms and weasel mullets? Where are the giant plastic-framed glasses? Where's the too-much eyeliner? Where are the combat boots? The kamikaze shirts?

For that matter, where's the smoking? You can't just do it at parties, or at your step-dad's cottage, or whenever it's convenient for you. You have to light up every chance you get; if you've got one burning away in an ashtray on the other side of the shower curtain, one within reach between conditioner and rinse, then you know you're on the right track. Cigarette butts should be a natural part of your territory, marking your trails through the world, like Hansel and Gretel through the dark, churning forest of emphysema.

And why are you in a grocery store anyway? You need to downgrade your diet. Just a tich. By which I mean: a lot. You should really only have enough money for cigarettes, beer, hair gel, rent and jeans (yes, you get to buy lots of jeans, and you invest in this matter some *serious* consideration). For food, I would recommend a steady diet of tuna and Ichiban noodles. Of course you'll get scurvy, eventually, but this is the price of cool.

And get rid of those headphones and all that goddamn downloaded music. You should only have a small collection of cassettes (mostly mixed tapes), and only half of them should play properly on your little, shitty ghetto blaster. Yes, you can go look at the foreign imports at the record store, but only for something to talk about at parties.

And no more hugging. Or safe sex. Or blowjobs. Or career planning. Or ...

O forget it. You're far too happy about all of this, and your skin is *waaay* too good, and you're just too much aware of the irony. How else could it be, when you're taking polaroids in bad light, just so you can run home and scan them?

weekend grandeur

les grandeurs; india ink on paper (page from an old math text book). Miss Kensey Crane, everyone.

* * * * *

Here in Canada, it's Thanksgiving weekend. More importantly, it's a *long* weekend. We'll probably go up to Ottawa for an afternoon, to see the vikings (read: my nieces), and use the rest of it just to catch up with life. Maybe a bird will be eaten, maybe not. Does it matter?

Do you dance gracefully?

Last night: C gone to Toastmasters, flush with her 'Competent Communicator' badge (really, these people are worse than the Masons), me not finding the remote ... fucking *anywhere*, then irritated by the tv not having actual physical buttons on it for changing the viewing mode, so no Virtua Fighter then, no Pai Chan and her dancing helicopter kicks for me, and the cats crying at the front door not nearly amusing enough (something wrong with me, lately), and not yet wanting to do the recycling, or to haul garbage bags up the alley, in the rain, and putting off my weekly shave, I found myself sorting through and cleaning up the magnetic, schizophrenic mess of photos and artwork that slides around our refrigerator door. This is something that C would not be caught dead doing; for her, the past is some banana republic they've changed the name of a dozen times, and their money was always bullshit anyway. So it's up to me to pick out the best pictures of the nieces and nephews and children of friends (if they even are still friends, anymore), and rearrange the balance between cute and obligation, and then file away the rest. (To be fair, and somewhat in retaliation for things like this, I don't think I mowed the lawn once this summer ... I wouldn't care if she was growing vampires back there.) The best rediscovered picture was drawn by my niece Stella, probably a year and a half ago. It's a skull-faced girl wearing a red dress. Her dancing legs might be on fire. And above her head is a lonely two-tone rainbow, blue and grey.

so many fires to choose from

Wherein the ephemera bits get dealt with.

* * * * *

O Ladies Night

Here's our friend Jill and C, on their way out the door to see Joyce Carol Oates at the writer's festival. Both of them three sheets to the wind: C well into the precious red nectar ("I like to kick back," she says), Jill in the blank middle of a three-day rum-and-diet-coke rampage. "Diet 'cause I like to look like a lady," she says. And then: "I'm so stoked about seeing Hall & Oates again!"


Tin Man

Following this little man over the causeway yesterday, when suddenly these crushed cans come spilling out of his pocket. Four or five of them at least. And I'd seen this little man before, around the downtown, and once or twice on the campus where I work, and he never seems to belong anywhere.

He gathered up his cans in a hurry, like a man picking up change.



Hats

*Someone* does not like hats. Hats have a habit of not staying on her head, of being donated to sidewalks.


Learning at the Library

Sitting there in the periodicals section, reading my New Yorker and feeling rather smart and rather rich, when someone walks by and gasses the place. You know: that creeping cloud fart that makes you hold your breath and pray that it passes. Only this one didn't. I had to flee to the art stacks.



Mentalism

A friend of mine is quite mad at me because she thinks she recognizes herself in one of my stories. Why would anyone make a claim like this? Why not say, Bah, that's not me, he's totally exaggerating. And why sound off at all? Personally, I expect less and less from people all the time. Personally, I *expect* people to have bad thoughts about me. Feel free to write them down!

So much minor, indignant mental illness going around these days. Or maybe I'm just watching too much Six Feet Under.


And Here Came the Unfamous

My five seconds of glory: a photo spread in SNAP. Do I always look like this, like some kind of just-awoken, shambling bear?


Shawn-o-Vision

My nephew Shawn, soon turning four, was in the garden with his mom one day, when he started banging two rocks together. "What are you doing, buddy?" his mom asked. "I'm going to start a fire!" he announced. "Well, good luck with that," his mom said, and continued with her flowers. A few minutes later she heard the door to the van in the driveway open. "What are you doing in there, buddy?" she asked. "Looking for matches," Shawn said.

Who has a birthday?

*Someone* has a birthday today. Someone turns one. That's pretty old, Chickie, but no worries at all: you'll always be delicious.

* * * * *

She's had a rather nasty cold lately, which isn't so hot for pictures, so I'll share these instead; they're from maybe a week ago, enjoying some of daddy's yummy tuna casserole.

* * * * *

It's also my mom's birthday today, too. Happy Birthday, mom!

let's turn the furnace on

There's a kind of hollow defiance about the day after you're sick -- things aren't quite right yet but you're determined, very determined to put in the appearance, or at least you tell yourself so, that and other things like, Yes, goddamn, back on schedule, the schedule will do you good,, knowing all the while that coaching yourself is just a little bit *crazy*, it's the kind of motivational bullshit you roll your eyes at when other people do it, but then again it's Day Three and if you don't get out of the house today then you might go the route of the *real* kind of crazy. And that's no good.

Day One happened to be Friday, staying home with Chicken, her and her cold and its mucous weeping from her eyes and nose. But it was okay. We played it low-key, stayed indoors, Chicken sleeping or within the soft confines of her pillow prison, me cleaning the house, then making supper. But later I was tired: the kind of tired that sends you to bed at 8:30. C went out drinking.

So Day Two was my turn, my riotous stomach with its typically unquiet revolution (C calls this 'tricky tummy' and 'having the diary', while I prefer to live in an un-Anne-of-Green-Gables universe). And then I slept a lot, and C wanted to know why the cats couldn't cuddle with me, and by nighttime I had that feeling unique to inmates of hospitals and asylums, that sense of inner bruising you get from not moving enough.

So Day Three I got up and brought Chicken her bottle and made coffee and went through the house collecting C's beer bottles and wine glasses, and I washed the dishes in the sink and generally tidied things up a bit and then walked to my studio. And I noticed that people who are out and about before eight on a Sunday morning are either very upright or very sketchy, and I wondered where on the continuum I would find myself.