red-handed

obtinem 2 ; ink on paper (page from a math text book). * * * * * One of *those* days yesterday, those end-run-end kind of days, when your thoughts fall apart and you turn that corner away from yourself, and it doesn't matter what happens, you don't care, you don't care what anyone says or what happens to you because you're too tired and too done, and in a strange way you're liberated. Normally I don't go out for that having-nothing-is-everything bullshit but yesterday came *pretty* close. Dangerous. And then it passes, and you get some sleep, and the next morning you're just like every other putz, hustling to get to work on time. * * * * * Just finished Cosmopolis , which is essentially that very story, only on a grander scale, with a greater fall: this super-rich guy who makes James Bond look like a schmuck, this guy who decides to impose his will on the yen, and won't listen to anyone, and loses everything, and then revels in it. It was just ok

Musak ; mixed media on canvas, 20 x 24 inches. The string series continues. ** Musak ** I didn’t care. I just didn’t. I wanted to be present. I wanted to be righteous. I wanted to be some kind of force. Some kind of mystery. What I *didn’t* want was a driver or a tennis coach or platinum-plated electronics. And I didn’t want to go to camp. My parents sent me anyway. I was fifteen. The place was called Camp Chetangi. It wasn’t on any map. It looked like a resort. We had a chef. We had *menus*. The stables were out of some movie. We had individual horses. And individual instructors. Mine played classical music. Mine said, In Mozart’s day, horses were an everyday part of life, especially for people like you. I thought, Shut up, Mine. You don’t know me. What could I do to make them know me? And you know what I did? I ran. I ran out to the forest. I ran deep into the forest and stood there. I could hear them looking for me, calling my name. But I didn’t move. I just let the night come. Sh

prin umare ; ink on math paper. * * * * * The other day I saw a guy with a face that looked like a ticket to a permanent disability cheque. It looked like something fresh and boneless from a butcher's shop. This guy came out of his house and shouted at another guy in a van across the street. He shouted, Hey you fat fuck, we're all waiting for you to get your fat ass out of that van. We want to see if you can get your fucking fat ass across the street. This was during the day (cover your ears, Oona) but I'm more often walking by this house at night, coming back from my studio, and I always turn my head to see into the kitchen, because there's always a game of solitaire on a computer screen there. Always. I can see the fluorescent green in my dreams. I also saw the lady of the house out once, with her tiny dog not on a leash, but I tried not to look directly at her. * * * * * Yesterday, just up the street from this: some guy with a shaggy beard and mirrored sungla

determini ; ink on paper (page from an old math book). deci ; ink on paper (page from an old math book). * * * * * Dream this morning that I couldn't remember the combination to a lock. And I was just stuck there, not remembering, the dream stalled, and stalled, until I finally got up to use the bathroom and told the numbers to the dark. * * * * * Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy yesterday. Good. Eat those zeroes. How high + mighty they used to be. You needed a fucking credit card just to get a membership. And those fucking late fees. And this when you're nineteen or twenty years old, and no one you know has a nickel that isn't marked for rent or beer or smokes, but you do know some chick with a VCR, and she wants to watch Rain Man or Beetlejuice or fucking Crocodile Dundee II , and it could be two hours of static for all that you cared, as long as it had the right ending. * * * * * For what seems like forever I've seen this scrawled on the bathroom wal

Two pretty chicks. And for all these I have to thank my friend Leah , who not only sold books for me but remembered to bring a camera (she's a bit of a picture bug, this one).

My older brother once made a bet with a university friend: next paper, best grade wins. The friend (we'll call her M) then proceeded to lay siege to the thing. She made plans, she made lists, she made her library card bend and flake under the weight of so much use. She read and she read and she read, and then she wrote and she wrote and she wrote. My brother, on the other hand, went only above and beyond his usual behaviour: instead of half-scamming his way through the thing, and sliding a late paper under a professor's door with a belch and a hail mary, he actually did most of the research, and didn't write it at three o'clock in the morning. I think he got an A or a B+ (this is back in the day of grades corresponding to performance). M did worse. Far, far worse. Not only that, but the professor had written her a note: Don't ever do this again. * * * * * This came to mind yesterday, as I started to process the evening of my book launch + art show, and the ove

cheer up, chickie (everything you know is an accident) ; mixed media on wood board, 30 x 30 inches. The string series continues. * cheer up, chickie * When you’re in the army, you never leave a room without your hat. But if you do leave your hat in the office, people will think you’re still there. Bonus. When it comes to salesmen, your goal is to get rid of them as soon as possible. On the flip side, never take a sales job without a base salary. Whatever stock it is, people never want it. You know you’re trying too hard when you don’t know where things are going. The worst kind of job is where you’re ignored. The best kind of job is where you’re ignored. When nothing good can happen, all you can do is choose the best way of losing. People will lose sight of who you are. Don’t take it personally. The personal lives of criminals are like the personal lives of adolescents. Most people have poor reasoning skills. ‘You picked me’ is the weakest kind of argument. People are generally good.

Later, Sailor ; mixed media on board, 24 x 24 inches. The string series continues. * * * * * Later Sailor (thoughts I’ve found on index cards) Mummsia: eating flowers to get high. You’re sure that was it. You’re sure. Why can’t you find the word then? / Not in this office. The industrial psychopaths are on full automatic, bringing in consultants by the truckload. They colour-code everything. / Running through the forest at night, the depths of bending blackness. Stop? I’ll never stop. / His roommates were useless when it came to feng-shui; all they did was lie around, their decomposing bodies stinking up the place. / His uncle would talk to Mike the Rat, complain constantly about mysterious odours. / Destroyed in the middle of the street, this big black bird smashed down, smeared along like it had been dragged to death by lightning. / At the horse races, I sit behind the old guy with the oxygen tank and think about luck. / Spin the wheel ... are you nice or not nice? Here’s

Drawings of my friend Row, who is tall and fierce and crazy as hell. She seems to have found a way to exist outside of time, to travel through life like it's a dress rehearsal for some seven year-old's tea party. What's not to like? * * * * * This fall morning: you make your way with the sun like a ray-gun going off in your face, seeing nothing but steam clouding out of your nostrils. You step by the Korean kids; they saunter around like they're going down to the basement to watch tv. Two pretty-pony girls half-yell at each other as they jog along. So great, one says, she's going to have a baby with buck teeth *and* a big ass.

The Whole Morning ; mixed media on wood board, 30 x 30 inches. * * * * * The Whole Morning The whole morning is wasted getting ready for the wedding: shit, shower, shave legs, work the iron, straighten the hair, paint face and put on a fucking dress. Are there people who do this every day? My motel room stinks; it’s layer deodorant, layer steam, layer perfume, layer hair spray, layer face cream, layer farts. Little pop-pop farts. The television gives off some kind of electric fractus. Nadine and her mom pick me up a little after one. She apologizes for running late but really we’re too early and we have to stand around outside the chapel like funeral bugs detached by sunshine before some little man with a hook for a hand lets us in. I’m feeling dim and hungry and suddenly very lonely; the bride is the kind of mutual ‘friend’ I know only through stories from Nadine. I think I’ve met her twice. And although I’m sure the venue was sold as being ‘intimate’, the whole thing has the chea

So we're at the roller derby the other night, watching our friend Toni so neatly deliver high elbows to the head, when Let Your Backbone Slide comes on over the sound system. Oh, it's your favourite song, I said to C (this is a game we play). But she didn't know what song it was, even after I named it. You've never heard of Maestro Fresh-Wes ? Sorry, I'm not into rap, she said. Okay look, I said. There's like three successful Canadian rap songs -- ever -- and you're listening to one of them. At which she shrugged. At which point we returned to this ongoing debate we have, this peeling-brain-onion thing about who has the bigger gaps in their experience, and C talks about how few music stores there were in her childhood Kingston, and how limited the radio was, and then some head-down years she spent in Montreal, exhausted from waitressing, and listening to nothing. And then I counter with this: Saskatchewan, middle of nowhere, three hundred people. Bush part

montante ; ink on paper (pages from an old math book). On my way to get Oona yesterday, hiking up Queen Street, feeling pretty good about my review , when I looked down (always looking down -- it's the dipping territory of being tall) and noticed holes in my shoes . That took the gloss off. Almost identical holes, one in each shoe, these tear-like things where the little toes are. This from a summer of no socks, and not doing laces (I'm a committed tuck-under artist, I'm afraid), and pushing Oona around like the Queen of Sheba. I'm *always* wearing my shoes out, and it will only get worse now that I'm walking just under 7 kilometres a day again. C and I have a philosophical debate about this: she says I should spend more, so that the shoes last longer, while I reach for cheaper, and then don't care how long they last. Of course, with the cheaper stuff your feet occasionally break out in dime-sized spots, which then start marching up your leg, and then you have t

I have a review in The Globe and Mail (online) today. The link is here . Is it strange to see your name floating across the screen when you didn't put it there? Does it feel peculiar to read something that someone else has written about your work? We don't get graded much, as adults. You reach a certain age where you no longer expect reviews (and then, when you get even older than that, you no longer care). I mean, I can hardly imagine someone actually reading my book (or anyone reading much of anything , these scattered days, when everyone seems so bored and stressed and poured away). Still, I'm glad he liked it.

{from top} owl 11-44, owl 11-47 and owl 11-40 ; ink on paper (math pages). Sometimes the hard chick wins. Yesterday, at the post office, the hard chick wanted to pick up her parcel. She was at the counter beside me, this ponytail with a tan and iridescent lip liner. Do you have any ID with your current address? asked the clerk. No, said the hard chick. I just moved here. I need some ID with your current address. No you don't. I came in here last week and picked up a parcel for my grandmother's boyfriend, no problem. It was the same ID. They shouldn't have done that. Well, too bad. I want my parcel. Okay. Okay. You'll have to sign for it. Whatever.

I looked. ; mixed media on canvas, 24 x 20 inches; the string series continues. * * * * * I looked. Mommy said no. Mommy said I love you. Mommy told me sssshhhh. Daddy said there's my big girl. Daddy told me I was making him old before his time. Mommy said don't cry don't cry. Daddy told me I was rotten. Then he tickled me. Mommy told me I didn't need to have that. Mommy told me I looked delicious in my new outfit. Daddy told me a story about a rabbit that tried to run away. Mommy told me I couldn't play with that. Daddy told me to open my mouth so he could see. He rooted around with his finger and fished out a nickel. Grandma said I was adorable anyway. Auntie said I was getting so big so fast. The doctor said that everything looked good. The sand at the beach said eat me. The ocean said come on in. The dog next door said if I ever get off this chain, I'll chew you to little pieces, o yes I will. Even Damien wouldn't pet him and it was his dog. The cat

Mark Lewis, still from Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside, 2005. Last night, walking home from my studio: o fair maiden. I rounded the corner and there she was, the silhouette of some lithe creature between the ages of 20 and 65, pushing a half-filled shopping cart stopstartstopstart, cursing and muttering and pausing every so many feet to throw her head back and *belch*. O sweetness. O light. She was crossing the street when a kid (well, he looked like a kid, that striped t-shirt, that speed) came up on his bicycle, and said something I couldn't hear, and she said something back about him being a selfish little prick. Then he was off. I took one last look of longing as I walked away and she rattled down into the darkness. Then she paused once more to fart. O princess.

My books came yesterday. The wee man at the post office grunted a little when he set the boxes on the counter. What's in there? he asked. Screams, I said. It's strange: this thing that lived in my head, these many things, then scribbled into notebooks, and rattled into keyboards, and illuminated blinking on a computer screen, letter by letter, word by word, written and read and printed and edited and read and pushed together as some kind of idea, followed and then chased by pictures, made drawings, and finally sent out, to be negotiated, and addressed, and now here they are back, finished and saying there . How can you get your hands on a book? Well, you can come to the launch . Or you can order a book from the publisher . Or you can order one from me at bestiary@fastmail.fm (I'll send you a PayPal invoice, and mail the book once that's paid). The good news about ordering one from me is that I'll put a little ink drawing in each copy I send. The bad news is that I