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Showing posts from June, 2013

well, * a duck

Can ducks be domesticated? Do people have ducks as pets? Can someone give you a duck? Twice now, Oona and I have stopped to gawk at a pair of ducks – who look exactly like these two – just hanging out around a house at the corner of York and Raglan. Like they live there. We could walk right up to them. And then I had to explain why Oona could not have a duck of her own. STOP CAUSING SECONDARY PROBLEMS, DUCKS. Also: have a good long weekend, Canadians! And be glad you're not American, because the Supreme Court has forced everyone to be gay and get married. FACT.

obviously

o my god i'm so happy ; mixed media on paper . This morning, walking along Ordnance on my way to work, an obviously-insane person waved at me in the softest way from across the street – thin-armed crooked waves, like tracing squares in the air – while mouthing something over and over. I took a guess. How much do you need? I asked. Couple bucks , she said, with a shrug, suddenly beside me. I liked her get-up – short black dress, several tight-fitting hats, cigarette all a-jaunty in one hand – and I almost always give money to the obviously-insane (one of the few causes I believe in), so she got a good handful of change, maybe two and bit. Thanks mister , she said, and wandered off.

garbage

low and mean and free; inks and acrylic on paper. * * * * * garbage There is something about country music played at distorting volumes over a freezing supermarket's buzzy speaker system at 8:17 a.m that always brings me close to tears. What is that man braying about? He sounds badly congested. He sounds like he's trapped somewhere between singing and honking. Why must it be so loud? I thought country-music artists(!) were supposed to be all heartland and soulful. Not rock-y and blaring. The way my head hurts is a kind of pressure from both sides. At the top of the pasta aisle is a middle-aged woman who has removed her glasses so she can cry in an unencumbered way. She's put her basket down and so has the middle-aged man she's with, who is looking especially bald and bespectacled and hopeless by the situation. It's not so bad , I want to say. I'm sure the artist isn't even getting royalties from this. Besides, you'll soon be ou

tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up

Probably because I'm old (and definitely because I'm grumpy), I take a hard line on keeping my drawing and painting in the physical world: by hand and on real surfaces. For me, a work of art must be a unique material object . But my brother Jon uses a digital canvas to great effect, and I can appreciate those results (above) too, only in different ways (perhaps like slides, or logos, or memes, or anything that can be shared ).

books about love

books about love ; inks on paper, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, in the shop . * * * * * Zazen by Vanessa Veselka Have you ever had one of those clever friends, those very clever friends who are intimate and aloof and charming and maddening at the same time? Your clever clever friend might even be a genius. Your clever clever friend might also have a mood disorder. Or at the very least live on some kind of emotional moonscape. A psychic blast area. Perhaps there's even a genuine mental illness, pooling beneath the surface. Also, your clever clever friend might not even be your friend. Because lies are the only truth that matters. I read this book in the smallest, sharpest bits. The writing is smart and dense enough to make you feel the need to take many breaks for air. In fact, I kept putting it down not expecting to pick it up again. But then I did. Because I wanted to find out what happens to Della, the narrator. And I could not guess. In many ways, Della is like

the apartment

Uploaded two new files to my (slowly) growing Soundcloud. One is a stand-alone story called The Apartment . The other is the third part of a collaborative piece: the first part is here the second part is here and the third part is here and we'll just keep going and going. * * * * * My Father's Day was okay. I had a cold. I went to my studio. It rained on my walk home. I phoned my mom. I didn't have to make supper (the girls were at a party). I got to drink (most of) the last bottle of beer in the fridge. I went to bed early.

the summer of my parts

Decided to embrace summer today, despite the sky looking like a chain smoker sealed behind the tinted windows of a idling Camaro. Well, perhaps not 'embrace', exactly – never that – but at least I wore shorts, and even sandals, and almost appreciated the breeze coming off the northern shores of Lake Ontario. Whatever. I'm exhausted and slow moving and certainly rolling my shoulders. I did find ninety-five cents (three quarters, two nickels – one American – and a dime) on the sidewalk. I took my prize money to work and washed it at the sink, just like I used to do with my keys at the mental hospital.

burn-o a la bono

Last night, just a few days after drawing her (above), I had the strangest dream about Linda Darnell . And Bono(!). Linda and I were on holiday(?) – some kind of combined boat/helicopter excursion, a day-trip kind of business operated by Bono(!!). He sat at the back of the boat, louche and slouching, his arms spread like he was relaxing on a couch, looking out at the ocean from behind his outrageously expensive iridescent sunglasses. "Is that going to be a problem?" I asked, pointing to some rope that snaked out from the front of the boat and then back, dangerously close to the outboard motor. "I use the new Photoshop to insert myself into all sorts of world-historical photographs," Bono said, rather loudly, to make himself heard over the noise. "It's really great!" The engine choked and then quit and we began to drift through a dark green sea littered with floating televisions. "Is it my imagination, or am I too heavy for this boat?" I a

iain banks

Iain Banks, author of one of my favourite books – The Wasp Factory , has died of cancer at 59. An effacing interview subject, a very down-to-earth kind of writer, plain-speaking, a lover of whiskey, and a deep traveller into writing's dark frontiers.

study no. 98

Study no 98, from the garden - watercolor by Annamaria Potamiti a member of the famous NITE ART OWLS

house of cards

Not the Netflix version but the British original. A four-parter. After episode three, C and I tried to speculate as to how it would end. I based my answer on how almost everything ends in cinema … or rather how it never ends. Well, I won't say how, but I was absolutely wrong. Which makes this series not only notable, but completely entertaining. The main character is like Iago with reasons and pedigree. Recommend, recommend, recommend.

the keep-going part

I complain, in that dig-digging inside-out way, at least 2.5 times too much, and I understand that more fully when I see a post like this one from Bridgette Guerzon Mills , who -- despite being flooded out of house and studio(!) some seven weeks ago -- continues a thoughtful conversation with and about her work ... in one sense following it, and in another looking forward to it, to when she can realize it with her hands and dreams once again.

no deep assignments

  Kingston has a poverty problem but it also has a proud-of-poverty problem. Which is confounding to me. Because whenever my own fortunes have been empty (and a mockery of that very word), whenever I've been forced to inhale poverty myself, my desires (I won't even glorify them as ambitions) were mostly about not taking it in too deeply, certainly not accepting it as normal, or as some sort of decision, as the settled state of affairs, and mostly hiding it, and wanting, desperately, to move away from it. Like a toxic cloud. To just be able to pay the rent, and bills, and buy groceries, and shoes, with some predictability -- that was the equivalent of being able to breathe. Properly. But what I see around me these days is a kind of poverty tribalism, where these guys who don't work (and won't work, and have some kind of story why they can't) all wear this borrowed gang/jail look, and put it out there, on the street, like they're proud of it. With a toddler-a