THE BIG WHY

okay so who hasnt fallen into an incinerator

2006-12-22T22:29:00.000-04:00

okay small things. she was lying in bed
with her earrings and lipstick on. she
left her umbrella outside on the stairs.
she said she could smell the scotch
tape at the post office. the fishmongers
on roncesvalles were not happy
with the mild weather.

New Generation

2006-06-08T11:46:00.000-03:00

It's terrible when a sushi restaurant
burns down -- the fish had no idea it
was coming. But now it's rebuilt. There
is a faint whiff of kipper. But it's
all new inside and I order a bento box
and drink my miso. Then I see the only
thing left from the old restaurant:
a red smudged fire alarm.

sport and a pastime

2006-05-13T16:36:00.000-03:00

we're playing half-court, three
to a team. our team is called
three in the key. and I wrestle
him softly to the floor. forty
minutes and I'm exhausted. do
you want to play full court
now? just to get some cardio?
I limp off and eat and enter
the bar for a drink. the oilers
are down 3 to 1. and they score.
a man with an edmonton jersey
says, drink is on me. then they
tie the game. a pitcher this time.
then another goal and in total
five unanswered goals. that's a
good word, unanswered. and I take
a small bow and the table of
strangers says I must return
for sunday's game. will I arrive in
the middle of the second period?
if you could get here a little
earlier, he says. for they are
playing in san jose.

In Banff for Game 7

2006-05-02T17:10:00.000-03:00

Deer in the snow. Horses with
their foals behind them. At breakfast
a woman in a green ski jacket. And later
she's in the programme: cabaret sequins
and a band full of tuxedos. If you
are an artist and left a tube of toothpaste
at Community Services, I now have it.
The owner of the borrowed guitar, I thank
you. I'm listening to Keith Jarrett
at La Scala. If I stick my head around
the balcony, a ship of fog is snagged
on the top of Rundel Mountain. The
librarians prefer to work on the lower
level, not the basement.

I become the girl in the photo

2006-04-14T23:16:00.000-03:00

Last night all of the moon came up out
of the headland and you saw the land
because of the moon. The land was almost
yellow and brown and almost too the green patches
of moss. You could almost see all of that. And
we wondered if people ever looked for
lost things with the help of the moon,
and said no we'll wait for another night
to look, a night when the moon is full.
I've spent days on a roof with a
gallon of tar and felt and tacks and
then a few days inside a house prying
off various qualities of wallboard
and peeling away seven layers of wallpaper
and then finding photos that are ninety
years old, of a girl standing by the
side of a house and suddenly I see that
it's the house I'm in -- there's a
distinct feature to the frame of the
window. And I go outside to check the
window and yes I'm right it is the
very window and then I realize I'm
standing in the same spot as the girl
in the photo. When you stand on a roof
you own the house.

Around the bay with the Delmore Brothers

2006-04-11T11:10:00.000-03:00

A pickup passes with a young ram
in the back. I'm listening to the
Delmore Brothers. Why didnt anyone
tell me about the Delmore Brothers
before? From the 30s and 40s.
They have one song, The Frozen
Girl, that the Handsome Family
must have heard. They are not bluegrass
even though the CD cover says they
are. They yodel. They have a tenor
guitar. I heard of them because they
are mentioned in the CD liner notes
to The Louvin Brothers. Their harmonies
are breaking my heart. I have to stop
and look at the cold blue sea. The snow
in a backyard is arced like a horseshoe,
and catches in all the alders.

Half a day in St. John's

2006-04-09T00:06:00.000-03:00

The car rental agencies close at noon
on Saturdays. On Signal Hill it's
a belting wind, freezing, a destroyer
storming into port, a white
stretch limo parks and the driver opens
the door to a turquoise bride and
her husband and the best man and his
date. Are they crazy? They stand around
determined to take pictures,
there are bare shoulders and hands
on hairdos, then they all convince
whoever it was who had the idea to
pile in again. At the newest Sobeys
in the newest part of town a young clerk has to
flatten the bar code on my blood
pudding so he can swipe it.

Two lines

2006-04-04T18:10:00.000-03:00

Woman: How are you feeling?
Man: Yes.

Stereolab

2006-03-15T17:41:00.000-04:00

She bangs her tambourine like
Catherine Deneuve, though someone
says she's not wearing a bra. The
man in front of me is leaning back,
with his ear plugs in on little
wires, and I feel like I'm about
to bite the top of his balding skull.
This is atmosphere, I guess, this is
ramped up Lambchop, this is a ticket
someone's given me, and I'm at the
Phoenix when a few hours before I was
in Western Bay Newfoundland looking
at a house with no wiring or water
and thinking of buying it.

Reading at Whistler

2006-02-27T13:17:00.000-04:00

He volunteers on the slopes. He
helps the handicapped. Blind people, for
instance. He skis behind them. That's
a gondola, that's a snowboarder. Now
youre passing trees on your right.
The snow is like scar tissue and the
blind listen their way down.

Book Lovers Ball

2006-02-17T15:26:00.000-04:00

The wind is high and the sidewalks
shine in clear ice. Nine valets wear
green balaclavas. The man who grew the
oyster beds has seven shucking knives.
It's a long walk for a martini -- probably
a good thing. Do I have a library
card? I have three. A Tiffany watch
walks around on the pink glove of a model.
The brocade tux appears to be in. We all
eat beef, even the vegetarians, and
there are skewers of pickerel and the
skewers are made from real branches.
There's a literary catwalk and a child
scans ahead as she walks with a woman
wearing seven pounds of black crepe.
Followed by a nine piece band and I keep
my eye on the sax and trumpet. When the
sax and trumpet are raised we dance.
I wear down the heels of my shoes.
To a private club, that's where the taxis
go, where half of us whine and
the other half mix pints with the
vodka, the beginning of a bad sign.
But we haul ourselves out of there
and our tuxes receive a free round at
the Inter Steer. Also pickled eggs
in Italian wine glasses. Who suggested
LPs and egg sandwiches? Who was that
who sprayed medicinal cannabis on
my gums like I'm a doped race horse?
Who knew librarians had such midnight
dealings? On some illicit website
there are photos of all this.

Curling at Leaside

2006-02-14T14:37:00.000-04:00

I pulled on the red slider. I chose a broom.
I listened carefully to Heather. When she
crouched, I crouched. When she put the
butt end of her broom on the toe of her
shoe, so did I. When she pushed off and
slid and curled her stone into the
button, well how was it that I ended up careening
over the side of the curling rink and
jeopardizing three lanes of curlers while
recovering, in a Buster Keaton move, my
balance on the pebbled ice? Why was I the
only one of the eight of us to spend the
next day in bed reading Joseph Roth?

Toilet at Tiffany's

2006-02-02T17:11:00.000-04:00

As some of you diehard blog readers know,
I like to visit and grade the public restrooms
of this world. I was passing Tiffany's.
So I went in. I headed for the men's watches.
A man with a handlebar moustache, he rubbed
his shirt cuffs. I'm just looking, thanks.
The price is tucked under the body of the
watch, or perhaps there is no price, just
a series of numbers indicating the provenance
of the watch. I hear an elevator. I walk
to the back of Tiffany's. Which floor sir?
I scan the list and ask for six. To the
men's lounge! And at the top of the building
is a hallway to the washrooms. One toilet
in a room on its own, and one urinal. The
fixtures are by Toto. A square sink. Regular
paper towels. The mirror is generous and
clean. B+

Last dregs of New York

2006-01-30T13:50:00.000-04:00

Just a bicycle tire locked to a pole,
the rusted chain, no rim. New phone books
are out. The strong legs of Citigroup
Building, aluminum square legs. At Times
Square a silver box -- a US Armed Forces
recruitment station. A guard at ease,
blue cargo pants. Little side windows in
the corrugated metal, like a country
mailbox. A flotilla of yellow cabs
pouring up out of East 79th Street.
Heading east. The bumber guard, a plastic
panel between driver and back seat.
I happen onto the Explorers Club, where
Bob Bartlett met Robert Peary ninety
years ago. Tusks by the fireplace.

New York aftermath

2006-01-26T16:45:00.000-04:00

I'm in the reading room at the New
York Public Library. I walked between
the lions and the lions are white.
The oak tables are about eighteen feet
long. Brass circles for electric outlets.
On inner floor, flatscreen monitors
with CATNYP as the screensaver. Most people
here are reading or writing with pens, about
a seventh have laptops. Each seat is numbered,
I'm at 657, and all the numbers are odd at
this table and run clockwise. I've turned
all the open encyclopedias to the page with
the word Newfoundland. There's an exhibit
of illuminated manuscripts downstairs, the
first open book has a map of the world,
a portuguese map from 1552. And the words,
Terra D Baccalao.
I meet my publisher. She gives me directions to
the office. She says we're at Broadway and Fifth
Avenue, a little sidestreet that joins them.
I'm writing this down and then she says, We're
in the Flatiron Building. Okay, I said. I know
where youre to. So I'm in the Flatiron Building,
and the windows at the peak are covered in
clear plastic and the ceilings are dropped. You
can protect the outside of a building, but not
the inside.
I read with Joel Hynes. Is it strange to see Joel
in New York? I'm in the bookstore with the owner
and then hear, Hey. It's Joel, finishing a smoke.
He offers one and I have one with him. He looks
good, that beleaguered cool thing he has going on.
And we read and Joel is very good and professional
and the expatriot Newfoundlanders take
care of us, and our publishers take care of
the bill. Thank you publishers, thank you.
It's late in the morning when I say goodbye
to Joel, and the garbage trucks
hurl down 5th Avenue. A man drops off the back of
the truck and whips out the white bag of garbage
sponsored by the Doe Fund. And runs across a
crosswalk and jumps back aboard the rear lip
of the truck. The garbage bin is empty. I guess
someone else puts in a new bin liner later in
the morning.
The silver tower on the Empire State Building is
like a picture tube in a TV, or the filament in a
lightbulb. The lightbulb broken off. Some silver
in the Chrysler Building too. Like the silver on
the cathedral spires in Ottawa, the one in Lower
Town.
In Madison Square, park staff clean up sidewalks,
green coats with a white maple leaf on the back.
One is wearing homemade cardboard shoes over
his personal shoes.
And then I'm home in my bed and there's tennis
from Melbourne while I brush my teeth.

my New York reading, beforemath

2006-01-23T18:04:00.000-04:00

I'm reading in New York Tuesday night, with
Mr Joel Hynes, at the McNally Robinson bookstore
in Soho. Probably the reason my publisher
has set up this blog is so I'll mention things
like this. So I'm giving you twenty-six hours
notice. Any suggestions about what Joel
and I should do after we've read?

the Bloor line

2006-01-22T13:54:00.000-04:00

At Victoria Park a man in a grey
winter coat is ascending the
subway escalator. He has a
grocery bag full of gasoline at his
face. At Matt Cohen Square an elderly
Chinese couple feed a dog that is
dressed in baby's clothes, the dog
is sitting in a pram. Youre not
going to say anything else, are you.
A young guy sits with a
man in his fifties who is carrying
a thermos of alcohol. He nudges
him. Youre going to shut up, arent
you, or you get off at the next
stop. The young man resumes his
old seat. There's an Asian woman
in her fifties between them. It's
rush hour, crammed full. Then the
guy must say something because the
youngster is on him. He's smaller
than the man but he lifts him by
the neck and hauls him out the
opening subway doors and launches
him at the floor. The man's legs are
still in the subway train. There's a
moment when he's like a patient on
a table. But he suddenly sobers up,
pulls in his knees and swivels
on his back and stands, laughing as
the doors close and the train accelerates.
The young man is shaken, embarrassed,
he whips through the pages of a magazine.
He looks like he works with paper in a
warehouse. A minute goes by, then the
Asian woman leans over and says something
and she is saying thank you.

Hello tree

2006-01-05T14:11:00.000-04:00

I visited a tree I hadnt seen in a year.
Same tree.
Same snow in its limbs.
This was near Flesherton.

New Year's Eve in Grand Bend

2006-01-04T13:36:00.000-04:00

We drove to Lake Huron and stood on the
ice. There was sand mixed with the ice.
A woman said to her daughter, Skate
out further I dont want you skating on
the sand. We played darts at Finnegans,
in Grand Bend. We'd asked people, what's
to do in Grand Bend at New Years. But
they were all heading to Sarnia and
London. You had to play darts with a drink
in hand, house rule. If you ask someone
how old they are, that's flirting. If
you tug on a man's coat lapels, that's
also a good sign. But midnight was spent
on the ice with an Ipod and shooters
and very small champagne glasses.
We walked further out towards the
rim of water. We followed a string of
shadow made by the flagpole and the
porchlight. Until our lead man, a man
wearing Italian shoes and no socks,
broke through rotten ice. He fell two
feet, jammed in the ice up to his thighs.
He looked at his waist and then pulled
himself out and turned around, drink in
hand. We all turned back to the
cottage. We followed him. It was a bit
like a christening, a welcoming into the
world of the new year.

Why I like Al Tuck

2005-12-27T15:43:00.000-04:00

He arranges three glasses
of whisky on the piano stool. Then
the piano player wants to sit
down, so he carefully arranges
them on a small cushioned seat.
He leans back on a high chair
wearing a velvet jacket that shows
his wrists. He is concentrating on
a small brown guitar.
And he sings a slow song that
I thought had the line "beneath
the snow the unborn christ"
but was of course "unborn grass",
though I still imagine jesus
lying quietly under the snow.
And he sings this song so quietly
and long that it is only late into the
eighth minute of it that we
recognize it as "Snowbird".
Spread your tiny wings and fly away.

In the middle of thirty women talking

2005-12-23T11:49:00.000-04:00

We're shoulder to shoulder at the
best party of the year. One of those dangerous,
catered parties, where waiters refill
your glass, so you can't count your drinks.
An extravagant party where the furniture
is hiding in rooms upstairs. There is
dancing in the coachhouse. Women are grinding
the parmesan cheese on the dance floor,
where smoking is permitted.
I broke my hand, she said, falling
off a horse.
Women arent allowed cheese, her friend
says. They have to be skinny all the time.
That's how the French women stay skinny. This,
from a third woman.
Curiosity, the woman who had fallen
off a horse said, is its own reward.
I dont think women get their vulvas
stared at enough. That was one woman
to the boyfriend of another. I guess it
was advice. She hadnt broken her hand falling off
a horse. That was her new story. She
had broken her hand doing dishes, but that
answer was not Tolstoyan enough.
She had her glass filled with the
Chardonnay that was not Australian.
The hardwood floor had electrical
outlets where the lamps would be
if the furniture had not been moved.
There was a joke told about how Jesus
saves. And takes half damage. It's a
joke I cannot uncloak but someone
at this blog will decipher for me.
Guests had removed their shoes, but,
like me, put them back on at around
midnight, to combat the naughty
shoed company that dripped their
evil outdoor melt. A fantastic party. It's
always a good sign when youve barely
spoken to a man all night. When the
beautiful women in their twinkly
sleeveless outfits or even their
smart dark numbers seem to fill the
air with the cotton of their exuberant
joy. God do I love that cotton.

Rat

2005-12-21T13:44:00.000-04:00

It sat under the kitchen table,
bleeding. Was this a mouse. It was
a big mouse. It sat there, panting,
dripping. The rat trap upside
down beside it. The long coil of tail.
Dark and tapered and touching the
baseboard. The kitchen tiles are eight
inches square and the tail was longer than
a tile. The tail was precise and
clear, what I mean is, it did not
have fur. But it was dark under
the kitchen table. We'd set the traps.
The korean grocer was a little shocked
when I brought the traps up to the
counter, as if he didnt know he carried
rat traps. One night we'd heard gnawing. It was
tremendous gnawing. And I flicked on the
kitchen light and the two avocadoes had
been gouged, the squash had teeth marks
and two bananas in the bunch had a strip
of banana out of them the way some
people eat corn, in a row. That was rat
behaviour. But there hasnt been a rat
in the building in the eighteen years
that our friend on the first floor has
lived here. But this was evidence of rat.
And now I had a stunned rat on my hands.
I went for the hammer. It saw the move
for the hammer and decided. It trotted.
It went for the hallway. And down the
hallway it bled. Under the bed it went.
I moved the bed. Little footprints of
red out to the living room, behind the
Christmas tree. I followed the blood
trail. I moved the tree. It lumbered
over to the couch, dying but energetic.
I moved that heaviest piece of furniture
in the apartment. A smear of blood that it
had sat in on the hardwood under the couch.
Then we lost it. And we cleaned up rat blood.
And went to bed. An hour later its claws woke us,
loping down the hall to the kitchen.

dinner with oblonsky and levin

2005-12-17T15:41:00.000-04:00

I'm carryng two fillets of turbot,
two dozen oysters and a nine pound
capon. there's a pound of parmesan
too. It has the word parmigiana on
the yellow rind. I'm on my way home
to cook the lunch that oblonsky and
levin have in anna karenina. It's
been driving me nuts, this lunch.
They arrive and the waiter pours
them a vodka with a piece of smoked
fish. Then a fresh tablecloth is
laid over another tablecloth. And
they sit and eat oysters, champagne,
vegetable soup, turbot and capon.
Roast beef is mentioned in the menu,
but the waiter does not read it back
to them, the things theyve ordered.
And I have a woman arriving for lunch
who will not eat mammals. The turbot
sauce has absynthe in it. The oysters
are malpaeques. The champagne is from
a man who I was on a shortlist with,
and just before the winner was announced
he suggested whoever wins gets the other
a bottle of champage. It's Krug champagne.
There's also white wine. And dried fruit.
But when the capon hauls itself out
of the oven, my guests are a little
overwhelmed. They have dressed as
Russians, but they have not brought
their Russian appetites. I serve it
on a plate made in the USSR. I'm
telling you there's barely a dent
out of it.

Great Red North

2005-11-30T12:54:00.000-04:00

Late at night, we're with
friends attending the launch of Spirit
magazine. We're in a crushed bar, DNA, on
Adelaide. A native hiphop artist,
doing those hand gestures, as if he's
pressing air down. A baseball cap on
and a white towel under the cap.
He's a great mimic of black gang culture.
A waiter twisting through the crowd,
carries a grey plastic tray full of
empties above his head. A video screen
with poker. Am I the last to figure
out that native Canadians have a home
in hiphop music? The next act is
so American I have to ask: they are
Hispanics from Los Angeles, playing
the aboriginal card.

Haircut in the Snow

2005-11-25T17:40:00.000-04:00

Snow hurtles us forward into
the year. At night, faces are lit
from below because of the snow.
Waiting for a streetcar at
the Spadina subway line. How
unfinished these underground
stations look. The raw cement
and railings, it's like looking
at the back of bits of furniture
meant to stand against a wall.
Like I'm inside the machinery
that makes cities. I've promised
that I'll leave the party after
two hours, but I'm enjoying myself.
I meet a woman who's a hairdresser.
Do I need a haircut. Oh yes. Well
where can I find you. You can't afford
me. Well what's a man to do. I could
cut your hair now. Right here? Yes,
here.
Her apartment is next door. She fetches
her scissors. And while the food
critic and a group of women from
Montreal dance to Wild Cherry, I
sit in a chair and have a hair cut.
Her boyfriend comes over to check it
out. Remember, he says, youre ahead
of the curve.
I make the fucking curve, she says.

Now that the radiators are on

2005-11-17T12:09:00.000-04:00

Noticed while coming out of the internet
cafe laundromat, the headlights on all
the cars. It was three-thirty in the
afternoon. This was yesterday. So that's
it for the light. It's downhill from here.
Have you seen all the destroyed heels
of teenagers' jeans? It's like theyve
busted the nerve endings in their legs.
With the cold I've made bread with yeast
and I put together a moussaka that reminded
me of my first trip to Greece, when I
was 22, and how astonished I was at
moussaka, that it existed and how I
could not figure out what was making
it taste that way and why the texture.
I met a man in Soundscapes last week
and I hadnt seen him in 18 years.
I had travelled through Turkey with him.
He said he had photos of me, climbing
the amphitheatre in Ephesus. It was
so cold in Turkey, and we swam in
the thermal baths, with snow on
the white marble.

A bookclub near Eglinton

2005-11-11T00:35:00.000-04:00

She said her son used to be fair
and now he's got dark hair and
hair on his chest and he's big.
When he was small he was worried
he'd be short. She promised him
he'd be five foot ten. Now he's
five eleven. It's not like my
daughters. Perhaps, I said, you
werent banking on having another
big jeezly man in the house.
I'm eating cake after talking
about my book. I'm at a bookclub.
It's northwest of Eglinton. I
got there by subway and then
bus. It's on a street with big
independent stone houses with
a sidewalk only on the south
side. There are twenty chairs
crowding around the piano. And
I talk about The Big Why. Sometimes
I'm talking and I think, Michael
you are insane. You are completely
mad. I can sense my mouth opening
and closing and noise coming out.
There's a good question about how
the book is told in a modern voice
yet it's events that have happened
ninety years ago. And a woman says
Shakespeare did that. He wrote about
King Lear but Lear wasnt living
in the late 1500s. So I have good
company. But I'm not convinced
that they dont think a lunatic has
been set loose in the living room.
I eat the cake. And a woman
comes up to me, to sign her
book. You were great, she said.
We all liked you. I believe her.
I have to.

Giller night

2005-11-09T14:20:00.000-04:00

Note to self after getting
out of bath: after polishing
black shoes, dont immediately
button your white shirt.
Some of the drinks spilled on
my tux: vodka martini, gin and tonic,
rye and ginger, Macallan's twelve
year old scotch. Our table had
a soft, silver tablecloth and a grey
box stuffed with red roses. The
chairs covered in burgundy slips.
Overheard: The bitter truth, I'm
realizing, is this dress is too small.
Telemprompters on the back wall under
a turquoise chandelier. A young man
with an earpiece kneels beside me.
I hear this: He's ready for mike-up.
Final note to self: Dont let anyone
ever film me reading aloud from my
book.

Comments overheard in long rooms

2005-11-07T16:21:00.000-04:00

I learned in Ireland how to use a cellphone.
Dancing -- that's bad music for the white people.
She's taking spurious offence in her slip with sequins.
Dull is good for caregiving.
Anything remotely criminal I can figure out.
When someone closes their eyes, their glasses should disappear.

Listening to Herman Dune

2005-11-01T11:40:00.000-04:00

Dropped into Soundscapes on College
Street and listened to some CDs
on the earphones. Herman Dune. The
second track, Not on Top. Okay
I'll get this. And now wondering
about it. Four of the tracks are
lovely and the rest is a little
repetitive. We had a friend over for dinner
who saw the CD and said, Hey it's
Julie Doiron. So what's the connection
between Ms Doiron, a Canadian, and Herman
Dune (who appear to be from Leeds)?
My favourite song of theirs for the day
is, The Orange Hat, which sounds
like Velvet Underground when the
drummer sings. It's raining out.

Shadow Ball at the AGO

2005-10-31T16:45:00.000-04:00

I dressed up in my tutu and a hoodie
with a cob of corn with the letter
J chiselled into it and wore fangs,
so what was I.
I was also wearing a tux.
There were three fairies in
a green aquarium blowing puffs
of air off little sticks.
There was a floating box that
lit up as a hurricane passed by.
They ran out of martini glasses
and I should know.
We tried to tickle the ghosts and
make them laugh but they were very
severe ghosts.
There seemed to be fake sex going on
behind the scrims, but maybe that
was just me not wearing my glasses.
There were film projectors banking
light off cloth.
Later we were dancing with a Fellow
at Massey College. We jumped through
a window and over a fountain. He
is running up a hefty tab at Massey,
and I thank him for the heft.

Overheard at the Toronto Festival of Authors' Hospitality Suite

2005-10-29T15:47:00.000-03:00

Everyone dies by accident and it
doesnt matter which carrots youve
eaten.

Dresden Dolls at the Mod Club

2005-10-26T12:54:00.000-03:00

Dried flowers under the keyboards with
Kurt Weill in white letters where you
usually see Yamaha. First there's the
opening act Faun, erect as a bowsprit.
Classical guitar. Girls who dressed up
in tickle trunks. A red light that burns
all black to red. A handheld light source
read our tickets. We've snuck in my
underage niece. Girlfriend dressed her
in a leather coat and applied a slight
dark ring under her eye. At the door
the bouncer told us to wait, as the
line-up had backed up inside. So girlfriend
started talking. And we're in with a
16 year old. A stripper with red tassles
on her butt cheeks, two circus performers
rotating on a steel ring. Possessed dirges.
Devotchka is the second act. The lead in
tuxedo and some dark casual shirt, almost
garage, biker boots, tux tucked in. Again,
a classical guitar with pick-up. An accordion
player who makes a violin turn into a
whole string section. There's a theramin.
The drummer tries his hand at the trumpet.
The band has east European tints to their
sound, but theyre all from Denver.
Then it's the Dresden dolls. A woman
sitting at keyboards and the man at
a drum kit. The songs are pulses of contrast,
loud sounds mixed with pauses. The audience
is mixed, young and dark, but some in
their forties with long hair. There is
a good demonic force here, something not
at all menacing. A flower is thrown out
and my niece catches it. We have to get
out more often.

A weekend with my niece

2005-10-25T12:56:00.000-03:00

She likes Chinatown and Kensington Market.
We order the number 23 and 22 at Pho Hung.
I get a plastic man bent over blowing
bubbles out of his arse. We find a blue
parka at Value Village. We see Catherine's
red and gold carriage at the AGO. The spoked
wheels are as tall as me and it was Great. She
takes off on her own and ends up at the
Gladstone listening to the Republic of
Safety and the editors of a magazine I
can't remember now, starts with S. We
take transit for an hour and discover
all the peeled bodies at the Ontario
Science Centre. We schmooze at a Harbourfront
event and eat all the veal dumplings.
We see The Squid and the Whale and cry
and laugh. We play checkers and then
see Junebug and same result. End up at
New Generation ordering take and ume
boxes at midnight. It's rained the entire
time she's been here.

My first night back at teaching

2005-10-20T12:37:00.000-03:00

It's been months since I've walked
into the U of T and taught. The class
is big, 15, horseshoed around me.
Usually I teach six or eight. Intimacy.
Harder to connect. A rumble below us.
That's the subway. A chant to the right --
another class. Then a second class behing
the other wall. At least there's no
asbestos in the ceiling (last
year's classroom). We spend 45
minutes introducing ourselves and it
works. Everyone says a sentence that
is interesting and could be used in a
story. It's hard to convince people
who have real jobs that their work is
interesting and they can write about it.
A woman who works in mutual funds spoke
of an outside client. Those words, outside
client. If a story began with those
words, I'd read on. Half of them could
write stories just on how they got their
first names. The exhilaration of teaching,
of screwing my face up to think if something
is good and true, then, after two and a
half hours, the quiet return home.

Reading at the Heliconian Club

2005-10-18T22:47:00.000-03:00

Inside the walls are white with a bright
blue ceiling, so it feels like a mural
of Santorini. I read to 163 women and 2
men. The men have questions. The
women do too. If youre wondering who
wrote the questions in the back of the
paperback, the writer is Colin McAdam.
If youre wondering what Question 14 is
all about, I am too. If you think, from
reading the book, that every man in
Newfoundland is a homosexual except for
Rockwell Kent, well that would be the
fault of the author. I was wearing my
grandfather's watch, as I've busted my
other two. It's a cold clear night in
Toronto. I took the subway home, and
someone was reading the Complete Novels
of George Orwell. They were all under
one cover. A man with long hair in a green
army jacket was kissing a woman in a
checkered cloth coat. They were happy.

I sold my hat at an auction

2005-10-17T12:40:00.000-03:00

The trucker's cap in the photo --
the hat from Small Point. I sold
it at a Descant auction. I've
heard that a lot of people tried it on
and it raised forty dollars. So who has
the hat now? Anyone out there know?
Next year I will get a hat from Jerry's
Nose, or Dildo.

Two things I dont understand

2005-10-15T12:02:00.000-03:00

We're waiting for the machine to
print out the third receipt. She
keeps one and staples the other
two together. She hands it to me.
Why two receipts, why the staple.
The plane lands and docks at our
gate, the seatbelt sign goes off
and people in the back rush the aisle,
to get as far up the plane as
they can. Then they wait and jam
others trying to get into the
overhead bins. The plane never
deplanes quickly. So Why do they
do this?

Sometimes I want to make the new music

2005-10-12T10:28:00.000-03:00

I want to make it more interesting than
it is. I strain and hope that it will
be better. People tell me to listen to
Arcade Fire and Stars and Feist and I
strain my temples to make it better.
Then I remember how I did that when I
was young, when we were all looking for
the Beatles of our generation. For
instance I thought a song by Aldo Nova
might be it. I remember listening to
my brother's records and working hard
to make Prism into some kind of Pink
Floyd. Was I ever really bowled over
by Chris de Burgh's Spanish Train and
Other Stories? What is it in me that
bought every Paul McCartney album of
the 80s hoping he'd make something
brilliant. And I'm doing it today, I
am reluctant to believe my first instincts
because my first instincts are cruel.
Perhaps the popular music is only meant
to be eaten like food and then new
music eaten. How often recently have I
listened to Antony and the Johnsons?
And what do I think of the Dresden
Dolls? And what of Vampires of Love?

My first American review

2005-10-05T11:20:00.000-03:00

This appears in this week's Publishers Weekly.
I guess they wanted more daubs of paint.

This odd bird of a lucidly written biographical novel about 20th-century American painter Rockwell Kent is not about art. Other than the titles of a few paintings, and the studio where he retreats to escape his family and the world, there is little discussion of Kent’s work. Instead, this is the story of Kent and his family’s sojourn in Brigus, Newfoundland, where they flee the inquiring eyes of New York for some rural peace. But rather than affording privacy, the small town greets him first with fascination, then scorn, and then, with the arrival of WWI—and the socialist painter’s lack of patriotic zeal—unfounded fear. Winter expertly outlines his protagonist’s psychological nuances, but offers minimal indication of what Kent’s art means to him or the role it plays in his life. The author (Creaking in Their Skins) is on steadier ground with dialogue, which is uniformly trenchant and humorous. Kent’s discussions with his friend and mentor, Gerald, take on the glow of a modern Socratic dialogue or an intellectual improv routine, and Kent’s wife, Kathleen, comes vividly to life. Winter gives us a flesh-and-blood Rockwell Kent the man, but does not do the same for Kent the artist.

Mike Summers, my alter ego

2005-10-04T12:34:00.000-03:00

My sister gave me a column from the local
St. John's paper. It was about Mike Summers.
He's with the Constabulary, but also is
a referee for amateur boxing. She thought
I'd like it because I boxed Mike Summers
one summer when I was fifteen. Our fight,
my first amateur bout, was billed "the
battle of the seasons." It's a story I tell
sometimes. So I read the column and in the
middle of it, Mike Summers recounts, with
fondness, his first boxing match. It
was against a Mike Winters of Daniel's
Harbour. And how, in Newfoundland,
winter always beats summer. How surprising
to see your own name come up, in the memory
of someone else, in print, about boxing.

A long black message and Sailor White

2005-10-01T00:45:00.000-03:00

I woke up and in the sky some
message trailing behind a plane.
Can I read it. Long black message.
But it's a power line smudged
by condensation on the window.
It seems when I'm on the road
there are obituaries of Newfoundland
people. Today was Sailor White.
Last year it was Mike Wade. Shocking
when I see them in there, their
lives well described by Joan Sullivan.
And what does Joan think, being
often the person to tell us in
the Globe who has died from Nfld?
I once looked up a friend, Sherry
White, in the phone book. And
right above White, Sherry was
White, Sailor.
What is this napkin spoken
of in one of the blog comments?

Sunkist

2005-09-30T01:14:00.000-03:00

A wedge of lemon on my plate.
Part of a stamped word, SUNK.
It's Sunkist. What a beautiful
word from childhood oranges.
The idea of a hot sun giving
a wet kiss. In a Starbucks
a woman takes my card and says,
Do you need room?

Is this true

2005-09-30T01:13:00.000-03:00

Life is easier than we think.

On the Beach at Oak Bay

2005-09-30T01:00:00.000-03:00

Am in Victoria. Found a trail down to the sea.
Hazelnuts falling hard on the wet lawns.
Saw a rabbit. Small ears. Read an essay by
Ben Marcus in Harpers. He mentions the Silver
Jews and John Hawkes, and I thought it must
be the first time those two have ever appeared
in print together. I had been
listening to the Silver Jews just before
leaving Toronto, and a friend, at four
in the morning on Tuesday, wrote in my
notebook this quote from John Hawkes:
Old fireworks: some expend themselves without
energy and some fire high into the night,
the breath of a long-haired animal on its
knees.
My friend was very drunk, and he was losing
badly on a pool table on Queen Street. We
were with another man who had climbed a
fence carrying a bottle of wine, with a woman,
into a swimming pool, skinny dipping, and
they didnt have sex.

Me and you and everyone

2005-09-25T15:45:00.000-03:00

It's so good to be watching a movie
where nothing that happens can be
predicted. And that scene where
Miranda July and John Hawkes are
walking down the street. The street
becomes their life, how they riff
on a thought, these strangers who
understand they could be living together,
that enfolded life and the possibilities
that string out for all of us, that
poem that asks God to give me strength
to live a double life, or to be cut
in two, what a powerful moment and thought
that is, and how it puts all other movies
and poems and novels that have researched
information to dish out, how much those
things are weighed down in cement, and
how easy it is to have my feet sunk in
cement.

On our roof seven red tomatoes

2005-09-24T17:27:00.000-03:00

There are two tomato plants on the roof.
In clay pots. They didnt enjoy my leaving
them for ten days. There's a pot of basil
too. And yesterday we ate caribou prime rib
with a tomato and basil salad. A homemade
meal.

Leaving Deer Lake

2005-09-23T12:34:00.000-03:00

We pack the butchered caribou
in three boxes lined with styrofoam
and tinfoil. In one we've buried the
antlers. If they find the antlers
they may charge us $250. That's the
antler fee at Deer Lake airport.
It's an airport where you have to
wait while they x-ray your checked
luggage. We watch the big antler
box full of frozen meat get x-rayed.
No trouble. I've had to find in
Corner Brook an export permit to
bring the meat. But no one at the
airport wants to look at it, so
I mail it to a friend. I like
writing letters in airports. I
carry envelopes and stamps. I usually
have a glue stick as well, in case
I need to stick something on a
postcard. I like collages in the mail.
All flights out of Deer Lake seem
to land in Halifax, that's progress
for you. And we wait, drinking coffee
from Brisket, a miserable chain of
airport restaurants if ever there was.
I'm still using my Starbucks card
that I received a year ago from
some literary festival. But airport
Starbucks won't accept the card.
We end up waiting at Pearson for
another plane to leave our Gate.
Such is the state of Air Canada
these days. And all this to say,
twelve hours after that frozen
caribou left my parents' chest freezer,
we pile its still-frozen cuts into
our Toronto chest freezer. The antlers
are intact.

By the light of six funnel lamps and then by the dark

2005-09-18T15:12:00.000-03:00

We cleaned all the funnel lamps
and filled them with lamp oil.
A load of wood and the wood stove
in the corner. The calm lake.
Three loons land, one after the
other, on the lake. First their
landing gear skims and then the
white belly. You can hear their
skid landing. Sounds like peeling saran
wrap. There's a dark brown rabbit
walking across the front yard. Hardly
a hop in him. I'm reading the books
that have been at the cabin for thirty years.
Books on how to build a canoe,
how to tan beaver hide, books with
photos of men in short jackets
using crooked knives to make a
living off the land. There's a
short fiction anthology with a John
Cheever story, Goodbye Brother.
Quiet. And in the middle of the
night I stand naked outside
on the cement step, utter darkness
now, and stare up at the milky
way, the faraway gargle of loons.

Forgive me if I ramble about this stag

2005-09-17T17:54:00.000-03:00

We'd been four days in the woods, and
had seen seven caribou, but all from
too far away. There was a glorious
white stag with tall antlers, he was
collecting a harem of does. But just
out of range. Okay, he was two hundred
yards. But we waited. We waited on
the Red Bog which is off the woodsroad
called Wigwam Brook Road in western
Newfoundland. We got up at 4:30 am,
fried some eggs, made a cup of coffee
and drove out the highway to the woods
road and then walked in along a trail
to the marsh they call the Red Bog.
And waited. And saw him punch his way
out onto the bog and look north, where
the fresh wind was coming with the
beginnings of Ophelia and the loss
of Rex Goudie. He looked north and
we were fifty yards south of him.
And now we've gutted him, quartered him,
sawed out his 18 point rack, carried
him out, hung him, skinned him and
driven him over to Summerside where
the Patey family will let him hang
in the cooler with all the moose
until Wednesday, when he will be turned
into steak and roast and ground meat
and long ribs and soup bones.

at ten minutes past eight a caribou

2005-09-16T20:37:00.000-03:00

He's now hanging
in the shed
I am off to bed

seal and saw

2005-09-11T12:44:00.000-03:00

Yesterday I made a seal flipper pie.
Today I woke up and there was a saw in the fridge.

Type the letters above thingy

2005-09-07T17:45:00.000-03:00

My blog keeper-upper tells me that
the blog is getting spam, and to prevent
it, comments must get past that
hallucinogenic typing quiz. Sorry
all you chiefs.

A songline to clean the dishes by

2005-09-06T17:03:00.000-03:00

I am a hippopotamus.
I use every pot in the house.

Once again I forget my passport

2005-09-04T16:37:00.000-03:00

We're hurtling towards Albuquerque
after five days in a tent. All of our
clothes smell of smoke. The rivers,
which had been dry and full of small
bushes, were swollen now with rain.
It was five in the morning, we had
to get the rented car back to its
stall and then an 8 am flight to
Chicago. We were thirty miles outside
of Santa Fe, halfway to Albuquerque,
following the silver shining rectangle
of an 18 wheeler's backside, when the shape
of my passport appeared inside my
forehead. Passport. Where was it.
We had the tent drying in the back
seat (hail the day before through
the partly open windows). I thought
about my leather St. John's satchel,
the black knapsack, my clothes suitcase.
I couldnt imagine the passport in
any of those compartments. The last
time I saw it, she said, was in
the hotel safe.
Five days ago, that was. And she
was right.
We pull over to a Giant gas station.
And rifle through the bags. Do you
have a number for the El Rey.
I run to a payphone. It's five-thirty
in the morning. A man answers. If we
have it, he says, it'll be in the
safe box, and I dont have access to
that.
I tell him about our flight and he
says hold on.
I wait three minutes.
Mr Winter we have your articles
here at the front desk.
And so we return to the highway
and I jam the gas to 95 miles
an hour into the dark north
towards the shining basket of
gold that is Santa Fe. Directions
to Cerillos St. And we pick up
the manila envelope that contains
the passport. Light now. I keep
driving back to Albuquerque, hitting
a 107 miles an hour. Until a police
cruiser joins us from an on-ramp.
And we settle back down to 75.
At the rental agency, we leave
wet clothes, old magazines, a cedar
shingle from the roof of a barn near Georgia
O'Keefe's old house (I found it in
the grass while Charlotte Rampling
and a friend stopped and asked us to
take their picture). The rental guy
drives us to the airport. He is a
solid guy to accept the car in that
state. Does it matter? We miss our
flight. We end up eating and reading
all day in Albuquerque airport, which
has no mailboxes, and then Chicago's
airport, which does.

Dancing to the Handsome Family

2005-08-31T14:08:00.000-03:00

We're at a wedding south of Santa Fe.
We're drinking champagne and a man
asks the father of the groom if we're
to thank him for the dinner last night.
No, he says. That would be Bob and Barb.
This, he says, leaning his champagne
glass over a little, is me.
The wedding band is the Handsome Family.
A husband and wife who live in Albuquerque.
Let me tell you friends, I am much
in love with Brett and Rennie Sparks.
Who else would sing of tuberculosis,
warm and/or frozen beer, the death
of passenger pigeons, alcoholism,
the murder of a giant and wild dogs
leaping over abandoned tires, who
else would sing these beautifully
macabre songs at a wedding? The bride
wore a dress that had ribbons at
the shoulders, and those ribbons
blew over and touched the arms of the groom.
They were married under huge cottonwood
trees and we danced on the lawn as the
sky grew dark and the outdoor swimming
pool glowed its emerald waver, we danced
to those slow songs and when the encore was
done a woman asked me to help with
her dress. She wanted it undone. As I
undid the knot she slipped off her shoes
and hurled herself into the pool. So I followed
her in, still wearing my white shirt.
And soon we were all in the pool and
the groom floated amongst us holding
a white napkin to his nose, for someone
had broken his nose during the diving in.

Camping in Bandelier

2005-08-30T15:32:00.000-03:00

We hike into the deep valley of cedar
bushes and cottontail rabbits. There's
a Mexican spotted owl. Now the tall
Ponderosa pine. At night we hear the
high artificial screech of a posse
of coyotes. The fire dying low. We've
grilled tilapia and corn still in their
husks and tuna with corn tortillas
and green salsa and roasted chili
peppers. We eat with a flashlight
propped on a roll of paper towels
pointed down at the food. We found
two pots and a frying pan outside
a closed thrift shop and we're using
those. Stars, bright Mars. We heard
an explosion and today drove past
Los Alamos National Laboratory. We
pass roadsigns names Bikini Atoll
and Oppenheimer. We're on our way
to Jemez Springs.

The adobe abodes of Santa Fe

2005-08-26T14:06:00.000-03:00

We walk through the oldest house
in the USA. The broken wood in
the rafters, the swollen chimney in
the corner. A table made without
a nail. The thick walls, the brick
inside the wall. There's a sample
brick. Later we walk past a five foot
hand grenade painted brilliant gold with a
bright red pin. Hand grenade reminds
me of migraine, and perhaps a migraine
is a hand grenade of the mind.
Someone says, I was too drunk to
walk home so I drove. A bumper sticker:
If you eat youre involved in agriculture.
At night the El Rey swimming pool glows like
a liquid emerald. The high stars.
After an early, disappointing review,
a friend told Georgia O'Keefe that
the critic was writing not about her
art, but his own autobiography.

We land in Albuquerque

2005-08-25T16:53:00.000-03:00

and rent a blue Chevy Malibu. We drive
it north along the Turquoise Trail.
The sun flares off the road signs.
The dark green shrubs of New
Mexico. The hills that seem
poured out yesterday. A rusted
metal bull with the letters M W
outside of Madrid. How many Madrids
can a man with the initials M W
walk down? I remember
passing through Biscay Bay in
Newfoundland, and the swim in
San Sebastian's Bay of Bisquay
just a few weeks before.
Both probably on the same latitude.

Five days in Woody Point

2005-08-25T16:46:00.000-03:00

There was the hike over the loose
pink rock to the sea. The waves
driving in hard but we stripped
off and ran in and I thank the
four of you who ran in after me.
Also thanks to Dave who yelled
at me to come in out of it, as
I wasnt aware of the undertow.
I'd like to thank the man in the
pick-up who stopped and drove me
home. I'd been at Clyde's until
six in the morning. That was when
the three skinniest arses in Woody
Point walked down to the wharf
and dove in. Who knew you could
hear songs sung without a guitar
for four hours straight? Thanks to
Andre who caught the mackerel and
roasted them on the fire out by
Middle Brook cabins. And to Barb
who fed us pasta and scalloped
potatoes and to Clyde for the pea
soup and the story of him reading
my book in Goethe's garden. I thank
those who took the warden to the
top of the tablelands while I poached
fish in Trout River. One of the
above things is not true.

J&L Convenience, Small Point

2005-08-22T18:55:00.000-03:00

I've been wearing a trucker's
cap all year from J&L Convenience,
Small Point, Newfoundland. It's
the one on this website where
I'm befriending the pony from Cupids.
I found the hat in a restaurant in
Carbonear. I'm on my way to Broad
Cove and realize I'm driving
through Small Point. So I keep my
eye open for J&L. And find it. I pull
in. I put on the hat. I walk in and get
a case of beer from the walk-in
cooler. I square up to the cash
and the woman behind the counter.
I've been wearing this cap, I say, all over
the world. Whenever I've got a small
point to make I touch the cap.
I've worn this cap in Australia and Hawaii
and at bullfights in Spain and in
London and at readings all across Canada.
I'm here to tell you, I add,
that advertising pays.
Oh yeah, the woman at the cash
says. She punches in the price
of beer. So will this be all?

The Lundrigans and the Coffeys will Render Assistance

2005-08-22T18:03:00.000-03:00

About ten years ago I camped
on the beach at Angels Cove. So I
drive down there again. But the
road is washed out, so I back
it up and try to pull over to
the grass beside the steep incline.
I lurch the car into the ditch.
It's a brand new rentacar and, in the
insurance-refusal box I've
read these words: FULL VALUE.
Three kids come up from the beach.
A girl of nine looks at me as
I'm feeding slate under
the front wheel for purchase.
That's not a good place to get
stuck, she says.
She returns with her grandfather
on a red quad. He looks at the
front of the car. She's brought up,
Gus Lundrigan says. I'll get
the young feller in his four by four.
The young feller arrives
in the pick up. And they winch me
up. They are careful with plastic
bumpers and brakelines and they
shout at the fact they make new
cars now with nothing to hook onto.
Even the nine year old girl is
distainful of the new automobiles.
They are wearing white shirts and
with the rocking and spinning tires
and the winching, I've got them
covered in mud. But I'm out of the
ditch. Now park that, Gus Lundrigan
says, up by mother.
And it's the great-grandmother,
Mrs Coffey. Four generations
of the Coffeys and the Lundrigans
have pulled out this foolish
traveller who wanted to camp on
the beach of Angels Cove. Not a
scratch on the car. I thank you.

Cape St. Mary's

2005-08-22T17:58:00.000-03:00

The gannets sound like a fan with a
catching part, some kind of rotating
sprocket. They are louder because of
the fog. Perhaps their mates have a harder
time finding them. Cape St. Mary's
is the animal kingdom's Manhattan.
Sheep with lambs, the lambs have long
tails. They really jab at the udder of
the mother. They knead it.
Swimming in a pool in Red Head River.
Getting out along a gravel bank.
I can hear the falling gravel under
water, the sound comes through my third
vertabrae, but not my fourth.

What I write on

2005-08-22T17:55:00.000-03:00

In this tent I write with a pen in
a black, unlined journal. Room enough
for illustrations. I'm posting blog
entries at public libraries
all around the Avalon. So no, the
quad-man did not see my little ibook,
as I have no ibook. Perhaps the
present tense quality of this blog
makes you think I'm writing it as
it happens, rather than recreating
the as-it-happens feel.

Camping at the end of the world

2005-08-16T16:18:00.000-03:00

have camped near the lighthouse at Cape Race.
This is a gorgeous mysterious road. Dirt roads
are. Just east of Mistaken Point. Overcast,
windy. Tent looks good with its full rain
fly. Bought peaches at Bidgoods. A half hour
of scouring the beach yields an armload
of driftwood. Caught two small
trout, they appear red.
A quad comes down, man with ten year old son.
Fierce blue eyes. A yellow lab in a box
on the back. Case of beer bungie corded to
the front. Going down to give the dog a swim.
Fetch a stick. Youre roughing it, he said.
As they motor on I think, good luck finding
a stick.
When I'm up past the bridge fishing, with a
bit of land as a buffer, the sea sounds like
someone is moving furniture.

Your thought on the new cover

2005-08-16T16:15:00.000-03:00

The Big Why is now out in paperback
with a brand new spanking cover.
Reader, what do you think.
Just to include everyone,
I will ask, "Reader, what
do you think?" Hey my fingers
remembered where the inverted
comma key was. So the cover
is right there to the right
of all these postings. I realize
now it's slightly green. Someone
told me, perhaps they are insane,
that green covers dont sell.
Thoughts?

The start of a week in Newfoundland in a Tent

2005-08-10T15:29:00.000-03:00

I wake up in my thin tent and walk
out to the unmanned lighthouse
of Gallows Cove, near Brigus. A
trapskiff named "Ashley's Pride". A lone
humpback seems to surface for five
breaths then descend for 48 minutes.
In Spaniard's Bay grocery store -- refrigerated
no-name "lunch boxes" containing sliced
bologna, sliced cheese, crackers, and
four chocolate fingers, $1.99.
Gas is 102.8, still sold in cents.
Hundreds of cents. It's the only product
that sells for tenths of a cent. One
place can only post 04.8, implying
the 100. The blueberries are pickable,
but you have to sort through a bunch
of white ones. It's amazing how small
you can make your car by putting it
in park and walking away from it.
A sparrow enters the corridor of
lower branches.

Since Madrid a cage

2005-08-06T16:55:00.000-03:00

Since Madrid. It was put up
while we were in Madrid.
A boxy cage on the outside
of a window. Second floor. The
cage extends up and then over
the brick about nine feet. A ferret,
a cat, a bird? What could use
a cage like that? We are waiting
for an animal to arrive.

A Five Hour Window in London

2005-08-05T16:46:00.000-03:00

We were standing outside the
Prado and realized we didnt
have enough time to go in.
So we were thirty feet away
from the Goyas. The first leg
is Madrid-London. Our connecting flight
at Heathrow is delayed. We
have a five hour window.
What would you do. I looked at
a cash machine and withdrew a
hundred pounds. We took the
underground for six pounds each.
It is thinly used now. We
get out at Hyde Park Corner,
that's as far as it goes
since the bombings. We jump on
a tall red bus. It crams
itself towards Picadilly. There
are bicyclists. London, since
the bombs, has turned into a city
of bicyles. We call a friend and
meet her at Cafe Boheme on Old
Compton Rd. We eat outside. A man
is slowly walking with a cameraman
in front of him and a man in
front of the cameraman leading
him safely down the street (he
has looped a finger through the
back of the cameraman's belt).
There are heavy gadflies
that bumble into our hair. We
order a cold white wine and
onion soup and duck with roasted
pumpkin and a lemon tart with
coffee. Eighty-two pounds. Then
jump in a black taxi to lurch
us back to Hyde Park (past
Nelson's Column and the National
Gallery -- no time to check
out the El Grecos and Cezannes).
At our gate we're bumped up
to Super Affaires with fifty
pence in my pocket. The long
flight home reclined with champagne,
beef, iceberg vodka, your
own personal DVD player, eye blinds.

A Note on Gay Commas

2005-08-05T12:28:00.000-03:00

Gay being, of course, the updated
term for inverted. All right, today's
lesson is in direct speech, dialogue,
quotation marks. Quotation marks
are loud and jabby and indicate
in a forceful way that a character
is talking:

"Let's wrestle naked on the beach," he said.
"Okay, my shirt tails are tucked out already."
They hurtled themselves through the surf
and no one lost an eye.

If I write the same thing without
quotation marks:

Let's wrestle naked on the beach, he said.
Okay, my shirt tails are tucked out already.
They hurtled themselves...

This has a quieter look on the page. It
reads more like observed or overheard
dialogue. It reads like a diary or notes.
It's almost whispered. There's an intimacy,
the reader is on the beach with the
characters.

This diary feel also pertains to the
apostrophe. I'm reading Truman
Capote's letters, and
he often omits apostrophes. It feels
casual, less published, more intimate.

I do hope youre all eating the
fresh ontario corn.

A Note on Punctuation

2005-08-03T13:02:00.000-03:00

My editor smothers me in letters
from angry readers who deride the
copy-edit on The Big Why. She yells
at me softly. She knows I cannot take
punishment. Dear readers of punctuation,
all the missing apostrophes are my
own doing. I fought for them. I have
a small drawer in the side of my desk
full of the black marks. Bags of them.
I just decided one day, what's up with
this symbol that tells the reader of
a contraction. That two words have
been sandwiched and a letter or two
left out. Why do I have to remind the
reader of this grammatical omission.
Okay, you say, fine. But what's with
some words having an apostrophe and
others not? This is how I decided. If
a contraction does not alter the word's
meaning (don't becomes dont) then I'll
leave out the apostrophe. If the word,
though, becomes another word (I'd becomes
Id) then I'll leave it in. Also, if the
word looks too clumsy (Theyll) I'll
leave it in. So there's a list of words.
Dont, havent, shouldnt, couldve, oclock.
They are spelled consistently (well, in
the paperback soon to arrive it's
consistent). I'm sorry if this is a
pain to the eye. I hate eye pain. But
other writers do it: look at
Cormac McCarthy's new book
No Country For Old Men. Same with
omitting inverted commas. Which is
another reason entirely. I can yam on
about that too, if you wish. But please,
let's have a vote. Who out there didnt
mind the omissions. And who among you
threw the book out the window and wrote
a letter to Anansi, to chastise them
unfairly?

The Box Kite Clotheslines lead us to San Sebastian

2005-08-03T12:55:00.000-03:00

We take a train north to San Sebastian.
Clotheslines like box kites. Green
flat rivers. We drink canas of beer and
the rioja wine and end up on vodka con limon
while our bartender in the bar carriage
performs little feats of magic with toothpicks
and light coins. There's a Mexican with a
groove in his skull from a jealous .38.
We arrive in the dark and find a pensione
and eat fried mushrooms and sit on empty
aluminum kegs of beer in a tapas bar.
The city has three bridges and we walk
over them zigzagging towards the sea.
We hit the sea. It's three in the morning
and I run down to the sea, unbuttoning
my shirt. The woman with the broken arm
is unravelling her sling and tensor
bandage. We fall into the dark surf. There
are other writers with us but I can't
name them here for we are all naked and
drunk and wrestling in the wet sand.
Fortunately no one thinks to click a
camera. The black sea and the hovering
green Jesus of San Sebastian lording
over us.

Frostbite in Madrid

2005-07-26T07:26:00.000-03:00

We flew to Munich and the urinals
had a fly painted on them, to avoid
splashback. Then we landed in Madrid.
She had broken her arm falling off
her bicycle, waving to the Korean
fruit vendor. We froze the ice pack
and slipped it into her sling. She
didnt notice it in the heat. She
must be the only person in Spain
to suffer frostbite.

A night in Lakefield

2005-07-23T15:13:00.000-03:00

Two ladies at breakfast. You learn a lot,
one says, from what people reveal about
themselves. If a person loses a husband,
we help. We had a Japanese Canadian in
our book club. And did that book, Snow
Falling on Cedars. Well, she told us
what Trudeau gave her when they offered
restitution. She went out and had her
teeth straightened and bought a new car.

On the bus a man was wearing jeans made
of aluminum fibre. Along the river towards
Trent pleasure craft are
being lifted through the locks.
A nurse tells me she once made a house call
and the woman who answered had something
rummaging under her shirt. It was two
baby raccoons that were suckling. Their
mother had been hit by a car.

We're to read on the campus where Prince
Andrew went to school. In the cemetery
is buried Catherine Parr Trail. Her
stone has a knotty wooden cross carved
at an angle. I walk to Margaret Laurence's
house and draw it. There's a classic
Mustang in the driveway.

A volunteer approaches me. Are you one of
the youth winners? Before I could answer
she says, One day you'll have books on the
table, just like those writers.
Later, she sees me filling glasses of
water on stage for the readers. She thought
that was considerate of me. Then I sat
down in one of the chairs and she began
to wonder if I was presumptious. But
finally I was introduced and she realized
her mistake.

The Blue Coffin at the Airport

2005-06-30T11:49:00.000-03:00

It rained and the roof leaked at Winnipeg
airport. At the departures x-ray gate I
passed a blue coffin. It was a glass cabinet.
A hose of blue LED lighting around it. I
looked inside. A rubber blanket. Then I
saw the woman. It's a massage table, she
said. Come here I'll demonstrate.
She pulled a nozzle and the cabinet sprayed
water like a car wash. You dont get wet,
she said. The rubber sheet protects you.
You lie under it. She does it every shift.
Okay, I said.
You want music? It's good it's Tai Chi.
She showed me the CD.
It's not too new age?
You'll like it take off your shoes.
She cranks up the lid and I lie face down
on a cushioned bench. A sheet of tissue
on my face. There's a gizmo to push if
I want the water to stop on a sensitive
spot. The lid closes and I feel like I'm
awake at my own funeral. I feel the chops
on my body. The rubber bladder hammering
down from the jets of water. It runs up
and down my body. You can't help but think
it's her, running her hands along your body.

One night in Winnipeg

2005-06-30T10:53:00.000-03:00

I like the buildings, how theyre sliced from
the same pie, then pushed around the basin
of Winnipeg and twisted so that
they all dont face the same
way. Tried to find a restaurant. Are you
a member? No I'm not a member.
The ballfield is lit up, so I walk to it.
Up the steep stairs. The game is just
over. Theyve covered home plate with
green tarp. And near the exit, a worn box,
EYEGLASSES FOR THE THIRD WORLD.
I check but there are none. Perhaps given
to the umpires.
I swim in the Fairmont's pool. This
is the 21st floor, and if you want the
keycode for their health club it's
31153.

Too sunny on sherbrooke, I dart into beaux art

2005-06-23T12:33:00.000-03:00

Three people sitting in the grass, in a bowl of
shade under a tree. The shade has moved on them
and sun is glancing off their bent elbows -- reminding
me of the man in the post office I stood behind. He
was short and balding, and in the boundary of scalp
and hair were the numbers 666 in blue ink.
So quiet and so recently exposed. There's a wooden
crucifix in the art gallery, from 1100. Is Christ
triumphant, eternally alive, or is he suffering
for mankind's sins. His eyes are open though his
eyelids are turned down. Sneaky! He is not sagging
on the cross, though he's nailed. There are two
portraits by Henry Raeburn, from the late 1700s.
A great double-breasted coat and yellow vest
on a man. Henry likes a daub of white paint on
the point of the nose. So in the end all you
notice is the daub. My god is daub a word.

On our way to Montreal

2005-06-22T12:33:00.000-03:00

Power lines on towers that look like columns
of newsprint. Passing transport trucks box
us in tight. How invigorating,
like we're involved in a greater economy,
a larger scale. We pass a barn that
is a rusted red. And beside it a billboard
as big as the barn, in bright red and yellow.
We pull in to a service station and stare
at the fast food. There's a poster tacked
below the regular features: a special on
gravy, three sizes of gravy. Places like
Whitby and Kingston are the same size as
St. John's. There's new pavement now, and
crisp white striping, like stitches on a
charcoal suit. Orange contruction signs
powered by solar panels. We hit Quebec and
a line of fluorescent cones with heavy rubber
tire bases, a sign that reads TRAVAUX.
There's a man dressed head to foot in
new leather, and boots of bright yellow.
Biker gear, ribbed leather that balloons
at his lower back, he looks like he's wearing
a borrowed scuba suit that doesnt fit him.
Roadsign to St Zotique and St Polycarpe.
Now there are two saints I'd like to meet
and share a chausson aux pomme at Premiere
Moisson.

The Frogmarsh of Bondi Beach

2005-06-15T13:20:00.000-03:00

I fly from Cairns to Sydney and pick up
messages and take a bus to Bondi. It's
hot, bright and the surfers are using
all their etiquette not to brain each
other. I'm looking for Terry and he finds
me, he's calling from the topmost apartment
in a wall of white condos. Up here, he
says, the fourth floor. I find the elevator
and it says 1, 2, 3, PEN. I press PEN.
The door opens onto a wide open room with
a baby grand and a wall of windows onto
the beach. Terry is from Brigus, he met
me with his wife at my reading in Sydney.
Youre living, I said, in the Frogmarsh
of Bondi, and they laugh. There's a photo
of their house in Brigus, the yellow one with the
twine loft. They have been in Australia since
the 1980s. We sit to eat prawns that are almost
red, and cold white wine from Tasmania. There's a
bowl of lemon water to rinse your fingers.
I meet his children, possible Newfoundlanders who
play rugby now and have Australian accents.

I drink nervously in the Railway hotel

2005-06-10T23:32:00.000-03:00

You have to walk through a mall to get
to downtown Cairns. From the elevated
parking lot, there's a vista of the
tropical mountains and the sea. The
escalators take you past Angus
and Roberstons's booksale, which is
four tables of books covered in red
plastic for the night. They look like
a hasty burial of books. The first bar
is the Railway Hotel. It is the hardest
bar I've found in Cairns. There's a tall
blonde man with a dirty unshaven face.
He's dressed in mechanics overalls and
his eyes are clear and blue. At the bar
sit a mix of races, half aboriginal and
half European. If you can say that. I
heard someone say once, do they like to
be called Aborigines or Aboriginals.
And the person being addressed wasnt sure
what the question was. It's like the Jews,
the questioner said. They prefer now to
be called Jewish.
All I know is there's an official tone
of grave respect for Aboriginal peoples.
The tourist signs that might alert you
to a rock in the ocean as being two brothers
who are looking for their father will
say this comes from an early folktale
of a certain aboriginal group. And then
stress that permission to use this story
has been granted by the group. I wonder
if we do that in Canada. The other part is
the postcards. These expensive black and
white photos of Aboriginal children holding
baby kangaroos or posing with a gecko on
their heads. What could be more outrageous?

I am the first to leave the Woolshed

2005-06-10T02:10:00.000-03:00

I tried sneaking out of the common
area, but I was dressed in my jacket
and carrying wodehouse and was spotted.
Come and have a drink.
There was a styrofoam box full of white
wine bottles. A gift from some tasting.
We're all going out dancing.
And soon I was encouraged and I followed
them into the hot night to the Woolshed.
We pushed ourselves on the dancefloor
and all the whites tops burned a
fluorescent blue and we danced in a crush
to the Bee Gees and Abba and all
those songs I realized I was the only
person in the bar to hear the first time
around. Was there another 40 year old?
Okay a 30 year old? No, Michael, there
was barely a 20 year old in there.
Someone spilled a pitcher of beer then
I realized it was me. Louise from Essex
was exhausted and sat in a window box
and then, when her song came on
nine seconds later, she revived and
with a flourish began dancing barefoot
in the window well. There were two
sisters from Maine and one was caring
for the other, but it was hard
to tell which way the caring went. Then
there was Paul, who knew how to dance. He
was doing something with his wrists over
his shaved head, and I knew that was something
that did not arrive in the human embryo
pre-1970. I was lost to that style and
so I bid my adieus and headed home, the
first to leave the Woolshed. In the kitchen
I found a kettle and a teapot and a teabag
and borrowed a litre of milk and made
a pot of tea and drank the whole thing
in my room with the green fan lazily
whomping and wodehouse finally in my
hilarious hand.

my own cape tribulation

2005-06-09T01:28:00.000-03:00

I had thought to get to Cape Tribulation.
I wanted to stretch myself that far north
and visit where Cook went aground. But I've
run onto my own reef in Cairns. I'm exhausted
and I've left my passport in an earlier
town. I have to find it, courier it to
Sydney and have it waiting for my Monday
morning flight to Canada. So I'll stick
around Cairns. It reminds me of what Miami
must look like. With West Hastings stuck
onto it. I'm living in West Hastings, in
a hotel that has a private room on the
second floor and I listened to the rain
hit the corrgated roof all night. There's
a green wooden fan on the high ceiling.
Am reading P.G. Wodehouse's "Right Ho,
Jeeves". And there is something light and
open and funny about this book. There is
something in it that Canadian fiction
could learn from. Humour and style and
openness. It's a memoir, and so he
abbreviates words. I guess it's twenty
years since I've read Wodehouse. Also,
watched Mike Binder's movie "The Upside
of Anger". Had heard the Joan Allen
character was impressive. And I thought
it was terrible. Binder himself and
Kevin Costner are terrific. Their
roles are fabulous. Those are men. But
what is it to describe Joan Allen that
way? That's not real anger, and that's
not the way women I've seen treat anger.
Binder gives a great speech about preferring
younger women because they enjoy a steak.
This is all true. But what is not true
is his portrait of an angry woman, or
the childish teenaged daughters she has.
It was pathetic. So too in Oliver Stone's
"Any Given Sunday." Dennis Quaid's wife,
and the daughter of the old team owner.
Both are terrible blonde women. What
gives, Oliver? There is no excuse for
men in films to be treating women this
way. I want to smack both of them.

great barrier reef

2005-06-08T07:40:00.000-03:00

I zipped on a wetsuit and chose a set
of flippers. I crouched for a weight belt.
Then sat to slip on a tank. I was on
the back of Passion of Paradise, a katmaran
out of Cairns. We were over the great
barrier reef. It was raining in Cairns,
but the sun was throwing pots of colour
on the water, turqouise to yellow to
black. We held our masks and fell into
the water. And breathed. And sank to
the parrot fish and schools of flourescent
fish and fish that turned sideways before
biting a dead thing and a turtle that
clawed away at an angle, straining its
grey throat. We pushed with our flippers
along the sponges and coral and stroked
a huge clam like the base of some heavy
lamp and its purple lips quivered. Later
we snorkelled around a barren sandbar
and as we climbed aboard it we were told
it wasnt sand at all but the milled remains
of coral after it has passed through the
parrot fish.

His wife held his shoes

2005-06-07T06:06:00.000-03:00

Have hauled my raggedy arse up along
the eastern shore of Australia. A night
on a quiet beach at Lennox Head, where
I found the Southern Cross finally, or
something that looked like it. Men were
fishing in the dark water with lights
and white buckets and long rods. I sat
there in my pinstripe jacket and the
trucker's cap from Small Point, Nfld.
Next day a bus took my to Byron Bay,
and I walked around a cape that is
Australia's most easterly point. I know
all about easterly points, and was
surprised how one can be replaced with
another. Cliffs, wind, the park
administration. There were five humpback
whales forcing fish into the shallow bay. It
began to rain. I watched a man hang glide
for the first time, and his wife waved
at him, clutching his shoes. Dolphins
turned their backs on the waves, and
surfed. There was the dark diamond
of a manta ray. When the rain happened,
it seemed everyone was carrying
an umbrella, and there was a chinese
woman in knee-high plastic red boots,
walking past an agressive black turkey.

Tailgate and a cello

2005-06-04T05:08:00.000-03:00

Three men in hard hats sit around an
open tailgate. They are eating sandwiches
from tupperware containers. Two have
green fluorescent vests, one orange.
A woman wheels a black varnished music case
across the road. Must be a cello. A
pair of wheels like an airplane's
landing gear. When I was looking for
jeans I went into Big and Tall. There
are stack of pants, with wide waists.
Me: I'm tall but I'm not big.
Woman: I'm sorry darling, you have
to be both.

A vain man with a sore throat appears nightly

2005-06-02T22:58:00.000-03:00

I have a small ragged sore throat,
like a piece of raw liver tied
to my neck and there are dogs
leaping for it. but there are
no dogs in sydney. perhaps the
birds have eaten them. I am
not happy with the length of my
jeans. what a small thing to have
in your head. but I am a man with
long legs and arms, and I refuse
to scrimp on that last inch. so
I enter a mall across from the
Queen Victoria Building. It's a
gorgeous old British building with
no doors on the openings so the
wind can blow through, a building
that can only be built in a place
like Australia or India. I plead
for help and the clerks tell me
to find G Star. I do. And I find
a store that will sell you jeans
for eight hundred dollars. I try
a pair on and they feel like something
they make you wear in an insane
asylum. something straitjacketish
about the thick denim. But then
I find my jeans. Last year's model,
a bit of flare at the ankle. Cheap.
Well, relatively cheap. They cost
the same amount as what they pay
for me to read. Which seems like
a deal. And so I'm wearing them
now, happy with my covered ankles.

a dance show at the Opera House

2005-06-02T09:45:00.000-03:00

The piano must have furry feet. They are
moving it around the stage and it is quiet.
The smallest dancer sits on the piano
seat, as if she may as well be pushed
as her mass could hardly matter. In the
end the light director should get a
little medical award. a doctor
of light. at the beginning the piano
is in a box and a mirror reveals that
all the dancers are under the piano.
I forgot to mention in my urinals posting
that the opera house toilets have
amazing sinks. It's a warped white
board and faucets pour onto the board
and there is no splash, the water streams
off behind the board.

Watching Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs

2005-06-02T00:30:00.000-03:00

At the cinema they dont have posters
for movies, just a plasma screen that
scrolls through trailers. So you have
to wait for the film you are curious
about to come up. I've got two minutes
to decide between four films and
I dont have time to wait for the latest
Batman to end. So I go in for Michael
Winterbottom. Because of his name.
Imagine seeing a film by someone
with your name, and then tag on the
word "bottom". What do we want in a
story. Is it enough that I'm left with
the image of a handjob, of cum on
a man's belly? A shiny condom
from below? That it's not a blue
movie. That the walls are a nice
shade of coffee. That they go see
a table dance and he has enough
but she stays to experience the full
thing. That he looks tired as she
continues with a vibrator. I guess
I wanted more tension. I wanted
more of the trouble that is
in us all. But it's worth noticing
all the moles on a woman's body.

My favourite Sydney urinals

2005-05-31T23:43:00.000-03:00

I love going into swanky
places and using their facilities
for free. Here are the Top 3
places to piss in Sydney:
(3) The Sydney Opera House
The room glows like a hollow white candle,
the recesses where toilet paper hangs
are lit from within. The doors are opaque,
almost green, like some glass water jugs.
(2) The Museum Train Station
At the corner of Liverpool and
Elizabeth Street, southwest corner
of Hyde Park. You walk down and turn left
where the railings are wood and wrought
iron and the ceilings are high. It feels
old and British. You piss in a long
stainless steel trough.
(1) The Sofitel Wentworth Hotel
On Philip Street near Bank, this exterior
struck me immediately: an austere curved
brick with a copper curtain that buckles out
at the awning entrance. Take the escalator
to the second floor, turn right at the
black piano. Silvered coffee tiles,
urinals like ceramic buckets sunk
diagonally on the wall. Chrome faucets
with drains near your shins -- to rinse
shoes? Manual sink faucets that you
can turn to cold and drink. Excellent
hot hand dryers below the steel paper-towel
dispensers. A separate swinging
door inside with eight toilet stalls.

a DJ plays the Bondi surf

2005-05-31T03:57:00.000-03:00

The 380 bus deposits me on the paved
ledge to the sand of Bondi Beach. A blast
of wind from the south, which is
not the warm direction. The sea is half
white, strips of white and they are
like rough pieces of white paper torn
into wedges, these whitenesses.
This is a scene for the new glasses. And
now come the surfers. Signs that I thought
said WEBSITE are WETSUIT. I set myself
on a white towel and read the TLS. I read
of writers who fall in love and remove
themselves to Greek Islands and have lots
of kids and die of tuberculosis. The
fast water turns the beach into
a curl of itself and there's a man
in a t-shirt crouched in the surf, he's
getting his picture taken by a woman
holding a camera over her head. She's
looking up to check the digital image. He's
clutching a vinyl LP in each hand like
a discus thrower, and he's wearing
grey headphones, grimacing. He is
playing the records on the lip of
each wave as they crash through him.
Beside them is a Chinese businessman
in a black suit, his pant legs rolled
up, his bare feet. He is delighted. A
hundred feet away is something small,
black and shining. A pair of leather
shoes.

Prawns the size of Lobsters

2005-05-30T23:14:00.000-03:00

I meet a woman I havent seen in three years
and she invites me to dinner with a friend
who is a photographer. We take a bus
and buy two bottles of wine. We are good
with our directions. We cut corners and arrive
off a main street in Newtown.
They show me the pictures G took on their cattle
drive. They are travel writers and go
on press junkets and piss tourist boards off
when they mention the beach is nice, but you
might get blown into the water by jet aircraft
lifting off. G lives in an apartment with her
boyfriend, an apartment with a glass garage
door onto a verandah and the rent is $370
a week. On the CD is David Kilgour. The photos are
gorgeous: cropped horse's heads, wranglers
looking off to the left, a ten year old boy
with a new cowboy hat, the shed skin of a snake,
a man shoeing a horse, a tourist in a pink
striped shirt and bug hat that make her
look like she's beamed down from the planet
full of barber shops. They take me out to
dinner in Newtown and share a bowl of prawns
the size of lobsters.

I sit with all the unemployed actors

2005-05-29T22:06:00.000-03:00

It's the Sydney writers festival wrap
party. Jared Diamond had the last word
and the last word was "an orgy of
cannibalism". He had me until the word
orgy. There's a milk crate of champagne
and beer and I'm asking everyone where
I should go with my two weeks of following
my nose. Then I see the unemployed actors
in their black and orange festival shirts
and saunter over to check them out. They
are the wait staff and the program deliverers
and the cafe latte makers. A man with crooked
teeth hauls me to his thigh and puts his arm
around me. If I leaned that way I would want
a man with crooked teeth. There is something
menacingly beautiful in a face that's handsome
with a wild mouth. Who are you, he says. And
while I tell him a woman in a turquoise jacket
stands on a chair and delivers a song. Behind
us, over the Old Coat Hanger bridge, the silver
dots of bats swoop and arc, happy stars.

At the Governor's House

2005-05-29T12:51:00.000-03:00

You have to march into the botanic gardens,
which are one of the more gorgeous things
on earth. Except for the ginger flying
foxes. We meet her excellency and then
later I approach the man who has two
medals on his chest. And he used to have
a girlfriend in Nova Scotia. And he's
been to Harbour Round, near La Scie
in Newfoundland. He went to a funeral
there, he said. Where everyone was very
used to funerals. I held a beer glass
and when it emptied a pitcher appeared
full of froth and a man emptied the pitcher
into my glass, negotiating the froth.
We talk for most of the night under an
oil painting of a woman who looks
like she is waiting for a man to ask
her to shell peanuts.

Unfolding Sydney

2005-05-29T04:55:00.000-03:00

We are drinking the last of the whisky.
They had taken us to their old neighbourhood
in Balmain, to a crowded raucous
thai restaurant where you can bring your own
wine and you must yell to be heard and
sometimes it is nice to yell. We unwrap
our shoulders from our jackets. We order a snapper
and I open it with my swiss army knife. We
are on the verandah that is sheathed in thick
see-through plastic and we are yelling
at each other in the most intimate way.
These are good people and this is
something that escapes out of the
edges of things, it might have leaked out
of the snapper's white meat, this
escaped truth. Later, hiring a taxi,
seven people fall out of a pub door on
the side of the street, it was a very
London way of falling and maybe they
were British. We were on the edge
of our unfolded map of Sydney.

Outside the Hero of Waterloo

2005-05-28T04:14:00.000-03:00

Which is Sydney's oldest pub. There's a yellow
sign with two figures and the word
AGED
I feel like loafing as there's the larger
part of me which is an idle man. Then there
is the active life whizzing by like a monorail.
Like something from the fourth dimension
youre not supposed to see. At night the
Australian flag whips past my window, and
it looks like a man running in a raincoat.
At the Circular Quay train station a plasma
screen reads, for outlying neighbourhoods,
Delay Earlier Vandalism. Did I mention that
at the most breathtaking views in the Blue
Mountains there are signs that tell you
of the vista, and they are repeated in
braille. What could be crueler.

Nancy Pearl the action doll librarian

2005-05-27T03:01:00.000-03:00

Nancy Pearl shows us her action
doll, it's outsold the Jesus action doll.
She was digitized in a town near
Washington and turned into plastic.
There's a button in her back and when you
press it, her finger clicks up to her mouth,
ssshhhh. I was lost yesterday, in the
valley of steaming eucalyptus, a blue
haze above the canopy. It's good to have
the underdog get a laugh in early at
the power that will destroy him. There
were birds in a large peeling tree. They
made a sound like the tree was trying to
tune itself in.

We are Driving to the Blue Mountains

2005-05-26T01:18:00.000-03:00

A speedboat parked in a scrapyard.
The Anzac bridge, like a harp, across
Darling Harbour. Which someone called
Darling Harder. Amatos Liquor Store,
You Will Be Amazed.
A tattoo down the inside of a man's
arm. Lettering as neat as machine
font.
Brick bungalows with red tile roofs.
But the red is probably painted iron.
Paramatta Road, theyre going to tear
it all down and rebuild. It's the only
bit of Australia that's reminded me
of North America. The Kenmount Road
of Sydney. Past the Sydney Olympics
facilities, just the rims of open
buildings in the trees to the north.
A concrete plant, pulling up sand the
colour of those flying foxes, and
the ginger clay of the French Open.
We're driving in a Mercedes Benz
twelve seat van. The grey pouch of
the stick shift, on the lower dash.
Couldnt they make it a little more
attractive than a hot scrotum?
That's a real Australian sky, the man
says. The one who is reading William
Hazlitt's "The Pleasure of Hating."

Ancestors in Paris in 1944

2005-05-22T02:43:00.000-03:00

To answer anonymous, the
only man in Paris in 1944 would
have been by mother's father. But
he wore cufflinks and leather shoes,
even when his shirts were threadbare
and his shoes had holes in the soles.
He would never have been seen in public
in a tank top. He was in the Coldstream
Guards.

With Men on Manly Beach

2005-05-22T02:34:00.000-03:00

I take the ferry out of Circular Key,
we're on our way to Manly Beach, me
and two men. We'll order fish and
chips and eat it on the cement steps
to the sand. We'll watch a long wave
curl and turn white around the struggling
brown bodies of surfers with long
bleached hair. There's a wall to
the water that will last seven years.
Above us the points of porches and
swimming pools, hanging over the cliff.
Later we'll visit Rick, the
Canadian ambassador. Or maybe he's
with the consulate. That's how authoritative
this writer is. We'll eat squares
of filet mignon in a living room that
has impressions of moved furniture
legs in the beige carpets. Rick has a
swimming pool with a red maple leaf
painted in the deep end.

On my way to Australia

2005-05-19T20:45:00.000-03:00

Who knew the plane lands in Honolulu?
We are told to wait at a holding gate
for one hour. Of course, I sneak off.
I have to repair the damage that happened
at the US customs site for homeland
security in Vancouver. I wasnt listening
or aware I was visiting the US. I live
in Toronto but carry a British passport.
It's a long long story, I said. The guy
looked like he had the time. This is
what he wanted: my left index finger
pressed on a black window that lit up
red. Right, he said. I thought he meant
he was done. Now your right finger.
As I'm doing this he waved a webcam
at me, and took a picture. That was the
damage that Honolulu was going to fix.
I found a courtyard, open to the sky.
A moist, sultry night.
Huge palm trees and a little memorial
draped with those garlands, strung on
yellow ribbons. The garlands are purple
and white, like sushi squid. I have
the enRoute magazine, and there's a photo
of the Ottawa poet David O'Meara in
there. I tear out his picture and place
it against the garlands. I want Dave to
know I left him in Honolulu. Cheers, Dave.