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Showing posts from September, 2011

I See Darkness (Dear Darkness)

I See Darkness (Dear Darkness) ; mixed media on cradled wood panel; 24 x 18 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame * * * * * Canadians love the darkness. It's a fact! Canadians spend more hours in darkness than any other people. "I prefer the darkness to anything else," says Tara Moon of Carbonville, Newfoundland. "Most nights I don't turn on a single light in my house." Over seventy percent of Canada's population lives in regions that enjoy at least twenty hours of darkness per day for eleven months of the year. In the so-called 'Stygian' regions of the northern Canadian prairies, people live in total darkness year-round. "People around here prefer their kids to be born in the dark," says Gillian Chee Chee from Pow Now, Saskatchewan. "The first thing we do is take them outside and throw them in the snow." Her neighbour, Wanda TwoLongFace, nods her head knowlingly. "It's the

Blue

blue (blue) ; mixed media on cradled wood panel; 18 x 24 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame * * * * * Canadians are blue. It's a fact! "A higher percentage of Canadians are clinically depressed than any other population in the world," states Dr. Vera Grey of the Tristful Centre for Wayward Studies. She explains: "There are some key factors at play in Canada -- the ten-month winters, frequent lectures by the Queen, a national fondness for cough syrup, the popularity of Nina Simone, psychic vapours, etcetera -- that combine and reinforce each other to create a culture of bitterness and unhappiness." Glinda Moody of Chapfallen, Saskatchewan describes her own psychological makeup as typically Canadian. "Oh absolutely," she says. "I've hated everyone my entire life. Some days it takes all my strength not to hit the milk man with a broom handle, just because he said good morning to me. And if I see one

I dream

jeg drømmer (I dream) ; mixed media on cradled wood panel; 24 x 18 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame * * * * * Canadians are dreamers. It's a fact! Nine out of ten Canadians say they would rather dream than be awake. "Real life is a real disappointment," says Brook Farmer, a cattle rancher near Poopshead, Alberta. "I step out my door and what do I see? Cows. Do you know what the stupidest animals in the world are? Cows. So you could say that my entire existence is fenced in with stupidity. And cow shit. So yeah, I'd rather stay in bed." Miriam Castles of Arcadia, Nova Scotia would agree. "Oh heavens, I can't keep count the number of jobs I've lost because I didn't want to interrupt a good dream by getting out of bed," Miriam says. "And even when I do drag myself into work, I spend most of the day just flaking out and daydreaming. That usually gets me fired, too. Thank God for the dol

what not to do when she is two

Just back from the book launch for Uncommon Magic, the anthology of writing by members of our Ban Righ writers group, which is over thirty years old. I wish I had some pictures, but I didn't bring my camera. Yet I don't feel guilty either, because there's no way I'd have been able to take pictures anyway, since I had my hands full with Oona. Or rather: Oona being mental . Because if there's one thing you can count on a two year-old to do, it's to start acting loud/mental as soon as a room goes quiet to listen to a reading. So we spent our time in the hall. At the far end. On the way home, I made a list of all the places/venues that Oona has been removed from for mental behaviour: + literary readings + restaurants + dinner parties + dinners + lunches + breakfasts + snacks + stores + malls + visits with friends + visits with non-friends + workplaces + waiting rooms + Christina Still, the event went well. I think. Now we are home. Oona is in bed. I am drinking beer

haunted

Haunted ; mixed media on cradled wood panel; 20 x 40 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame * * * * * Canadians are haunted. It's a fact! Canadians are visited by malevolent spirits more often than any other nation. "It's really not a surprise," reports Dr. Jonathan Howler of the Tuktuyaaqtuuq Institute for Talking Spectres. "Considering that three out of five residents admit to having committed one of the 'big three' Canadian crimes -- murder, manslaughter or fur trafficking -- then you have a lot of guilty, troubled people wandering around. Add to that all the aggrieved spirits -- all the homicide cases that go unsolved -- and you've got a virtual pandemic of ghosts." Dr. Howler's study, entitled Careless Whispers: the Casual Nature of Canadian Lust, Crime and Ghosts , reports that due to the changing nature of Canadian immigration patterns, while the oldest ghosts are almost all of British or Fre

red

Red ; mixed media on cradled wood panel; 20 x 40 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame. * * * * * Canadians love the colour red. It's a fact! Canadians wear more red than any other country. "I got married in red," says Ruby Fuller of Carmine, Manitoba. "I wear red every single day," Fuller states. "I've worn entirely red outfits to interviews, jury duty ... even funerals." Scientists have long studied why red is so appealing to Canadians. "It seems Canadians see red before any other colour," states Dr. Rufous Cardinal of the Munsell Institute. He states, "This might explain the Canadian penchant for violent sports like lacrosse and hockey -- oh, and all the rioting, too. Personally, I can get angry just looking at the flag." The femme fatale draped in red continues to be a powerful icon in the Canadian imagination. Says Rose Cassandra of Honeytruck, British Columbia: "I sexually

Uncommon Magic

Uncommon Magic: 30 Years of Writing from the Ban Righ Writers Group ; edited by Christina; Upstart Press. * * * * * C will be launching a book this weekend at the writer's festival -- it's called Uncommon Magic and it's a selection of writing from past and present members of the Ban Righ Writer's Group, which has been kicking around for thirty years now. I did the artwork and design. For free. And it wasn't easy (just try to imagine the trickiness of that title, and if when you close your eyes you see a manuscript being pulled out of a hat, or a glowing manuscript, or cascading stars, then you're halfway there). Still, it turned out pretty well. Plus, I chose as my own contribution a story so difficult and dark and crazy that I almost wept to see it in print. Take that, national archives! Anyway, if you're around at all on Saturday, you should come on down to the Holiday Inn between 5:30 and 6:30. It's a free event. C will also be selling copies at

call this number again and i'll kill you

Detail from an August Blesser illustration. * * * * * I had to take a phone call last night. It was awful. This had nothing to do with the caller or the matter discussed, but had everything to do with the phone itself. Because it's a new phone. And, like all new phones, it feels like a cracker. I found myself shouting, and wanting to get away from the damn thing, because there was a line of magical ants crawling across my face. C tried to explain to me how much better it was than the last phone, that it was 6.0-this and lightweight-that, but I didn't give a shit about any of it, because it doesn't feel like anything. It has no heft, no weight, no substantiality. It feels like a kid's play phone, that cheap cheap plastic feel. A million years ago, on another planet, I had a black rotary phone. It weighed about thirty pounds. You could beat someone to death with the handset. It sat on a special shelf in the hall, with its own little alcove, and the chord wouldn't

they are different than you and me

cigar-tin story #123 * * * * * The top one percent of Americans now make about twenty-five percent of that country's income. That same one percent now controls about forty percent of the country's wealth (meanwhile, one in six Americans now live below the poverty line). But guess what? Canada is catching up! A Conference Board of Canada study came out the other day, and it kindly explained how income inequality has been rising more rapidly in Canada since the 1990's. Yay! Thirty-three percent of all the new wealth created in Canada over the past two decades has gone to the top one percent of the population! Capital! * * * * * I've also recently read that seventy-five percent of young Americans (17 to 24) are unsuitable for military service because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record or are physically unfit. That could be our next goal! Capital!

pride goeth

I fell down some stairs on Friday. Actually, that's not very accurate, because I was going up at the time, and the falling was more forward and across -- I caught the top of my foot on a stair and then ... well, it became more of an aggravated stumble, I guess. And it was more embarrassing than anything else. All akimbo. And it usually wouldn't have amounted to much in the pain department, except the stairs were stone and I was wearing sandals. So I accomplished something just short of breaking my big toe, with lots of bruising and swelling to the front of my foot generally, and the last few days have been slow and awkward. The other day I saw a guy fall out of a delivery truck. I was walking up Princess when I heard this awful sort of slapping crack right beside me, and I turned just in time to see him hit the pavement in a heap. And he was doing this terrible sort of quivering. I put down my bags and went over to him, but the guy he was working with (they were unloading boxes

summer is over, i think

summer is over ; acrylic inks on math paper, 6.5 x 9.25 inches. * * * * * C was leaving early this morning for some Toastmaster's hoo-ha before work. "So who would be a Toastmaster's idol? Who would be at the pinnacle of speech making?" I asked. "Martin Luther King," C said. "Yeah, he was pretty good," I said. "But so was Hitler." * * * * * Oona and I have little talks as we walk (well, I push and she rides) to daycare. "Oona ... what colour is that house?" "Blue!" "That's right! And what colour is that house?" "Blue!" "No, yellow. What about that house?" "Blue!" "No, white. Okay, fine. But Oona ... what sound does an owl make?" "Whhoooooo, whoooooo ..." * * * * * Soon afterwards, we saw a girl so skinny that she looked like a praying mantis wearing jeans. She didn't walk so much as awkwardly perambulate. * * * * * Oona hates it when I say, &quo

nine eleven

There's a scary anniversary coming, and unless you've been floating in a pool of mercury, behind the walls of sealed cavern, within the bowels of an arctic mountain, screaming to yourself, as loud as you can, then you've already heard a lot of about it. A lot . And this is just the prelude. Saddam Hussein would have called it the Mother of All Anniversaries. Then again, look where his talent for hyperbole got him. It all reminds me of some sinister motion picture from the fifties, when black and white film was either overexposed or starless, just shades and shapes in shifting ashes, and everything cued by racing violins. Clouds boiling in the half darkness -- monstrous static-filled cumulonimbus, flickering with the shredded hearts of crumbled lightning, spitting leaden tears and electric venom in the shape of sharpened crosses. America is always compelling, fascinating, the big man in the room. Only now we have the brooding colossus, still movie-star handsome and comm

looking ahead

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