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 asked, looking down at the foot of water around my feet. "It's impossible for me to drown," Bono said, now too loud. "I just use Photoshop." We arrived at a very small island that seemed completey taken up by a white stucco house with a helicopter perched on its roof. Inside the house were all sorts of Spanish girls running around with no pants on, giggling like maniacs. "Put some damn pants on!" I yelled. "Bono doesn't want to see your little chicken bums." Bono put his hand on my shoulder. "Oh, I don't mind," he said. And then everyone was looking at Linda Darnell, standing at the top of the stairs, completely engulfed in flames, and smiling.
People are always telling me that my work is too dark. So I've put up this sunnier story, but even it has a shadow, as its original publisher – a fine Atlantic Canadian literary magazine called the Gaspereau Review – is no longer in business. ---------------- It was a simple enough thing and that thing was simply this: Edmund Kelley was a gentleman. Of course his mom called him her 'little gentleman', as in 'Oh Edmund, you are my perfect little gentleman,' which did seem to hold to a certain logic that these type of things often follow, considering her affection for him and the fact that he was, after all, only ten years old. Still, Edmund himself was not particularly fond of the diminutive aspect of that title. Gentleman was enough; gentleman summed up the whole thing rather nicely, thank you. He was definitely a more refined version of your average child. He lived in a state of perpetual Sunday m