Skip to main content

dark walking

1.
I think the biggest problem with walking is that you're not encased within a packet of cushioned steel plastic glass racketing around with stereo and WiFi hotspots and tinted framed views, that you're not confronted with actual people who could reach out and touch you, and have eyes and slide-y faces and are usually in your way and need to share the fucking sidewalk. When you drive, you have a largely (and strangely) sympathetic yet dismissive view of humanity, simply wishing that there were less people or better routes to work practice Gambler's Anonymous senior's genealogy book club. Meanwhile, on foot, I spend all my time looking at people and thinking

brain injury
brain injury
brain injury
severe brain injury
psychotic episode
no-hoper
old person
unwashed man asking passersby if they know where to buy fireworks
brain injury
brain injury
* * * * *

2.
Today my office mate of four years called me "Darren". GOOD MORNING, DARREN.

* * * * *

3.
Last writing group (until the fall) last night. I brought in a short piece about a failed writer who turns to prose poetry. Seemed appropriate. The walk home was slightly surreal, through streets around Queen's made rubble by construction, that lovely still end-of-day light.

* * * * *

4.
Leading up to the release of my second book this fall, I've taken to the idea of drawing and painting to the theme of its title – Dark All Day. There will be a series of these, fazed and fleeting, until there suddenly isn't, because the feeling has been washed away. Anyway: so far I've put three of them in the shop.

Popular posts from this blog

glamour, by extension

C is friends with the fashion stylist Rebekah Roy (left in both pics above) ... one of those people who personify calm and smiling success. On her blog she presents glamour in this very sincere, straightforward way ... whether she's taking pictures of people on the street , talking about stain removers , her favourite videos , or attending some glittering party . One minute she's ruminating on hair extensions, and in the next she reveals how she's been featured on the Vogue UK site. A real disarmer and charmer (and this without meeting her yet, although I feel like I know her because we both did our time in Winnipeg). * * * * * Coming home from Russia, we did many bad things. ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. In my own life, the glamour is wholly imagined. * * * * * witches, smoke ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. My second go at this one, and for some reason I'm painting a lot of smoke lately (note to self: tell C that I want to be cremated). *

the indisputable weight of the ocean

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

Oona Balloona (doesn't care about new tables)

Well, it's Friday, and since I'm pretty depleted in the chit-chat department, I might as well put up some pictures of Ol' Giggles At Ghosts before Grandma starts sending me hate mail. Man, what a goofball. At this rate it's going to be, like, eighteen years before she has gainful employment and moves out of the house. I mean, come on . * * * * * C is especially crazy and frantic today. About two months ago she decided that she no longer liked our dining room table (take that, dining room table! no more BFF for you!). Since then she's switched the dining room and kitchen table (and all the rest of the furniture in the house -- about thirty times, but that's another story) as a provisional solution while she scoured area stores for an upgrade. And she thought she had found one, on Wednesday, at JYSK ( Whatever , I said). But when she ordered it, JYSK called back to say that they were really low on stock, and that the stock they did have was damaged, and