Movies & A Book: Some of The Best Things I've Witnessed in 2010

Here's the best of what I've seen this year. I haven't seen everything. You may disagree with what I have seen. This is life.

FILM:

Inception

Go ahead. Try. Try disagreeing that this is one of the most technically (and perhaps conceptually) elaborate mainstream Hollywood productions released in years which also happens to work as a "movie" that a wide variety of audiences would enjoy watching.

There has been a backlash against Inception. I don't know how or why this is - perhaps it was over-sold as a deep "puzzle-solver" film, which it is not. And yes, the NYT's A.O. Scott has a point in his comment that the film's literal depiction of dreams are lacking psychological heft (outside of Marion Cotillard's performance as DiCaprio's wife). In any case, something has caused a revolt against this film and I say this revolt is missing the point.

Inception is, generally speaking, the most watchable, the most fascinating film of 2010. You are allowed to hate it.

A Prophet

I am a huge fan of Jacques Audiard, a French director who has always rewarded the viewer with films (Read My Lips, The Beat My Heart Skipped) that balance passion with style. With A Prophet, Audiard expands his canvas, creating a gritty, novelistic masterpiece on-par with The Godfather (yes). The story concerns a young incarcerated Muslim who slowly rebuilds himself from within the treachery of prison life, rising from under the thumb of a vicious mob leader to become his own person and create his own empire. Epic, patient, and in places extremely violent. People will be referring to this film for years to come even if it has not really made a mark in North America. Again, a masterpiece.

The Eclipse

I realize this Irish film was released in 2009, but it didn't get here until now. A compelling ghost story which eschews the two-dimensionality of ghost story films. It was around the twenty-minute mark that I realized it was a film which was going to confound my expectations (expectations based upon years and hundreds of similar plot lines): it wasn't going to squander what it was and fall prey to hackneyed cliché. A gorgeous, touching, ultimately humanistic film with a stand-out performance by Ciarán Hinds as a grieving father of two children who must swallow his pride to escort a loud-mouthed Aidan Quinn through the motions of a book tour of the small coastal city of Cobh, in County Cork. A sublime achievement by director Conor McPherson.

Notable: Winter's Bone - see it. It's on DVD now. Like A Simple Plan, it's a self-contained "rural thriller" (ugh) with a chilling undertone of barren hopelessness. Unlike A Simple Plan, it's uncomplicated which is what gives it more of an honest strength. Exit Through The Gift Shop is the perhaps best film made about art and the art world that I have seen - like Inception, it's not trying to be deep, just smart. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World blew me away because I expected it to be weak (perhaps because all the publicity photos inexplicably used a static image of Michael Cera standing against a fucking wall...imagine if you will, trying to sell Star Wars with a picture of Mark Hamill sitting cross-legged in the desert - sounds awesome, eh?). Not only was it not weak, it was the strangest case of "I don't know why I love this movie but I really do". Painstakingly, sublimely Toronto-centric (which, unlike the inexplicable promo photos of Michael Cera, shouldn't be factored into explaining why it didn't fare well at the box office) and wildly imaginative - those two things have never met before...oh but wait, I forgot the perfect companion piece: Kick Ass - also shot in TO, and also exceedingly expectation-defying (although the climax is kinda drawn-out). As far as performances go, Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Colin Firth (The King's Speech) stand out, along with Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence, and Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit (who, at 14-years, shows huge promise as an actor).

BOOK:

I would have said "BOOKS", but due to work and school I haven't read anything published this year (that I can remember), with the exception of John Vaillant's The Tiger. Lucky for me, since it is without doubt one of the best non-fiction titles I've read in years.

The Tiger is a meaty real-life tale of vengeance by the titular beast, in the winter hinterland of the Russian Far East (which the author calls, paradoxically, "the boreal forest"). Vaillant describes an environment historically, politically, and biologically unique, inhabited by hardened outcasts. The shadow of a predator male tiger, known never before to attack without cause, creates a wave of dread throughout the land, with only a small band of volunteers to figure out the mystery. Vaillant provides wave after wave of fascinating detail - examples of how man and beast have evolved throughout time, how human and animal behaviour have worked in similar paths - that by the end of the book you feel as if you should have a credit in Ethology. This is truly a page-turner and I cannot recommend it enough.

Photo: Self-Portrait, Credit River

Taking a Breath

For the first time in a few Decembers, I approach the end of the year without a knot in my stomache, without a brain scrambled by the to-and-fro of this and that. This is not to say that I'm not busy, that I do not (as I type this) sit with a few plates spinning above my head. This is also not to say that I do not face an onslaught of tasks once the merriment of New Year's Eve has ebbed.

I feel compelled these days to start putting things in perspective. Perhaps this is what happens when you turn 40 - perhaps I am being cliché. Seeking context and sketching narratives seem like writerly enough goals to aim for, but even as a writer there are a lot of things - tangents, curves, frays, tears - to reconcile within that task.

A strong influence stems from my current study of psychotherapy, which requires that I be in therapy also. You find yourself relating a story from your past - from your childhood, from your 20s - and you find yourself saying something you realize you haven't really mentioned to anyone before. Not necessarily secrets, but impressions of events. Sometimes events themselves. It allows you to discover how unintentionally secretive we can all be.

I have been struck by as often as I have been able to dodge the things thrown at me in life. Sometimes you don't have a choice: I think that's one of the first things you learn, but the hardest to reconcile. That is, if you don't want to subscribe to fatalism (which isn't to say that everything should boil down to some atheist/libertarian screed). Ultimately, life has but one author, and if you do not have a hand on the pen there is a problem.

It is thus, in the spirit of pen holding, that I try to take some time over the next while to add to the picture of my understanding of my self, with the aim of broadening that understanding (as opposed to solipsism) so that the rest of the (human) world may not be as strange and foreboding as it can seem.

Perhaps, some day, we will see that we are all artists.

Photo: Credit River #2

Book Review: Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Sometimes things just line up in such a way that you can't help feeling they were put there on purpose. Early this month, as part of a course I'm taking, I went to a weekend retreat, held at a secluded compound by the Credit River. It was a bit eerie, because many of my dreams take place in expansive compounds: wherever I go, even if it seems I'm outside, I just have to look up to see that there is a roof, or some sort of enclosure to remind me that I am not free. So, what book from our library did I take with me at the last minute? Why, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, of course. What I didn't realize is that much of it takes place on a compound...but I'll get back to this.

I've not read any books by Ishiguro - I haven't even seen the movie adaptation of Remains of the Day. That said, I did work on Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music In The World, an adaptation of one of his short stories. I'd heard good things about Never Let Me Go, and had always meant to read it. With it being released as a film recently (I don't think it did that well, despite the critical praise), and since I needed something to read during my time away, I thought it would be a good pick.

Never Let Me Go concerns the story of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. It's told from Kathy's perspective in the present. She is a carer, who drives from centre to centre, visiting those she looks after. Very soon we are introduced to their beginnings, as children, in a place called Hailsham. It's an isolated educational enclave, somewhere in England, where the students live, go to school, and grow up. But there's something a little odd about it all. Perhaps it's the isolation from the rest of the world. Something in the way some of their guardians regard them. All too soon, their sun-dappled childhood in Hailsham becomes something which haunts them as they grow into young adults. It's practically all Kathy can use to mark the passing of her time.

Within these reminiscences, we are introduced to Tommy and Ruth, who become the foundational friendships Kathy clings to through adolescence, regardless that Ruth oscillates from friend to enemy - a colourful rather than careful individual who becomes a voice of danger in the fog of their relationship.

The magic of this book is the skill with which Kathy's perspective is written. There is a purpose for Hailsham, for their being there. There is a reason she is a carer. Never Let Me Go is a capital-H haunting novel, inhabited by people who are slightly cold but reaching out, never quite managing to touch a meaning they hope is there. I can't say much more without spoiling things, not that it's a book laden with surprises, so much as layered with subtle, sad observations. A beautiful book for a rainy day.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (ISBN: 978-0-676-97711-0) is available at an independent bookstore near you, or at various online retailers.

Photo: Red Rock Canyon #2

Ryeberg Article #2 is Up!

Just a note to say that my 2nd contribution to Ryeberg, the curated video-essay site, is now online.

Previously it was Dennis Bergkamp and the World Cup of '98. Now it is the bossa nova spell cast by Elis Regina, and the classic song Águas de Março.

Cellphoto: Self-portrait (the other one)

Cellphoto: Self-portrait

Photo: Self-Portrait @ Western Hospital

I Don't Want To Know

As a writer, even though I am not part of any sort of literati, I am still plugged into the lit scene. You need to be if you want to understand the general to-and-fro of any industry you are interested in becoming a part of (same goes for TV, music, theatre, etc..). That said, I must make an admission. I am making this admission because I think there are a lot of people like me out there who feel the same but are reticent to admit it.

Here goes: I don't take any particular interest in the life of the artist outside of his or her art.

When I read a book, I don't care if an author comes from the East Coast and studied journalism, had a drug problem and now lives in a shed with a mastiff. It's not that I don't care about this author personally, it's that these facts shouldn't have anything to do with the book that I am about to read. I should be able to pick up the book, knowing nothing about said author, and be able to read it, enjoy it, be fully affected by it, without substantially missing something due to a lack of familiarity with the author's biography.

And yet, when you are culturally plugged-in (and by this I mean, you check out industry blogs, trade mags, etc.) there is so much white noise about the artists themselves that it seems divergent from what it is they are supposed to be doing: their work. We can talk about Picasso's passions, but 100 years from now there will probably only be discussion of his work - your work is the only thing left after you and everyone who knew you has died. And if people are still talking more about you than your work after this point, then I would think the quality of your work was overstated.

Would knowing that Stephen King battled drug addiction offer an insight into some of his writing? Yes. But, my point is that if that insight is necessary in order to fully appreciate a piece of work then there is a problem. The work doesn't work if you need a biographical cheat sheet to inject context into the material.

I think Bryan Ferry is an fantastic vocalist - and I don't want to know anything more than that. Nor the details outside a director's films, nor what inspired the playwright to write her play. I've got my own shit going on, thanks very much.

Ephemera is for journalists, fanzines, and those working on their Ph.D. The general public should not feel inadequate if they pick a DVD or book off a shelf, sit down in a theatre, or load a song without being prepared with supplemental information not contained within the medium which contains the work. The work inevitably has to stand up for itself. I write this for two reasons: first, with the likes of the AV Club and traditional print/TV media clamouring to add as much web-based context as possible to every article, there's a growing sense that - for the everyman - if you aren't savvy to the smallest details of each artist's passings and goings, you are nothing but a tourist. Secondly, embracing social media to a claustrophobic degree, we can now read endless commentating on authors reading their work for a live audience!...something no one really asked for outside the publishing companies themselves and perhaps the authors' parents. Let's face it: most authors can't read aloud to save their lives - it's not their specialty.

There are reasons for digging deeper, but that's up to the individual. It was interesting to learn more about HP Lovecraft when I reviewed Michel Houellebecq's quasi-biography of him and his work. What's funny, however - using that same example - is that when I proceeded to read the two works by Lovecraft contained in that same book, I don't recall thinking to myself "Ahh - this is where his uncomfortable relationship with women takes shape!". That's because the stories were two of his masterpieces, and when you witness a masterpiece, peripheral biographical information is going to gunk-up your enjoyment.

The medium may be the message, but the work contains the words. Outside of this we are left with cultural "bonus features". Nice to have, but not necessary.

Photo: Surfaces at Western Hospital

Photo: Eye

Ticket Stub: Spalding Gray

I have this ticket stub (above) from a one-man-show - Spalding Gray at Massey Hall. It was good. I don't know how to describe his "show" in practical terms: he didn't sing, he didn't dance, he didn't perform in the traditional sense. He talked. About himself. He was a monologuist. And his stories would encapsulate, in ever widening circles of narrative, the great many wonderful and (more often) terrifying things going on with his life.

He was an actor/playwright whose home was primarily New York. I'm not sure if New York makes people like Gray anymore. These performances were not "actor/playwright" shows - these shows were, in retrospect, a form of therapy. Gray talked about the things - worries, revelations, lost epiphanies - which affected him as a regular human being; the things which happen around the things we do with our lives.

His best-known performance, captured on film by Jonathan Demme, is Swimming To Cambodia. In it, with a desk, chair, and glass of water he discusses the events which surrounded the time he played a small role in the critically-acclaimed film, The Killing Fields. He talks of his research for the role in the film, of what actually happened during the reign of terror in Cambodia during the early-to-mid 70s.

Gray was a man given to self-exploration, perhaps painfully so. His mother committed suicide while he was in his 20s, and he exhibited symptoms of bipolar depression himself. Her death held an eerie fascination for him. In subsequent performances (also made into films), Monster in a Box (about writing a novel) and Gray's Anatomy (about his fear that he was going blind), he explored his neuroses and anxieties and how they filtered through his relationships with those close to him.

The key to Gray is that he was funny as hell, which turned all of his painfully honest accounts, his public descriptions of private contortions all the more enlightening for the viewer, as opposed to merely sympathetic. Gray was neurotic, but he wasn't looking for sympathy from the audience, and I think this is the second key to understanding him (as a performer, at least). When I saw him at Massey Hall in November of 1996, I don't remember a lot of details (it was his It's a Slippery Slope tour), with the exception of his description of sitting outside, trying to have a soulful discussion with his distant father while a fog horn sounds in the distance. I remember this because I was laugh-crying throughout most of it.

When I heard in 2004 that Spalding Gray was missing, that it was suspected he had jumped off a ferry into the East River, I was not shocked. Suicide - as an objective event, as a subjective idea - was something he had discussed since Swimming to Cambodia. Add to this that he had been in a terrible car accident a few years earlier which had left his right leg partially disabled (not to mention having a fractured skull), and you could see (in retrospect, of course) how, given his frame of mind, it might have pushed those dark thoughts further toward the limelight of contemplation.

It is a shame.

Who would you be without that thought?

Swirl

I am trying (desperately) to avoid a "boy, it's been a wacky ride these last few months!" post. It certainly isn't for lack of things to talk about, news to update you with, opinions to confess/shout.

Thing is, I don't know who you are. Sure, I know there are some of you who are semi-regular visitors. There are others who happen upon this place by accident (via Blogger or StumbleUpon). There are also those who come here via Google searches, either via my name or - most likely - a book review (which admittedly I haven't done in, oh, a year or so *). And no, this isn't going to be a "Matt wittily evading accusations of being a lazy bastard by turning the camera on the reader" post.

I've been posting artsy stuff, writerly stuff, industry opinion stuff. I don't mind the randomness, so long as there's no fluff. I do mind the lack of output. I wish, for one, that I could post more photographs (which is to say, I wish I had a better selection of photos to post **).

It comes down to the fact that I've been working like a dog since May (note: this happens every year that I'm working on a SAW film). When I come out of these periods, I feel like Rip van Winkle: a little dazed, slow on the up-take. Whereas last year this time I started teaching, this time this year I am a student (part-time) †. I have a small (but good) feature and a small (but good and potentially controversial) TV show on my plate from now till February. If funds allow, I also hope to have an editor working with me on my novel, with an eye to approaching a publisher or self-publishing if that doesn't seem feasible ††. I'm collaborating on a musical.

My plate is full.

- - - 

* which isn't to say that I'm not reading or that I don't want to do any more book reviews. I'm reading a lot of non-fiction, thank you. Much of it either out of professional or academic interest. However, if only to improve my Google ranking, here's a quick book review of Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño: What the fuck was that? (ISBN-13: 978-0811217170)

** another casualty of working so much is my photography. I still have the same roll of film in my camera that I'd loaded in June. I think I've only taken 4 exposures since then. Of course, my cellphone camera gets all the fun these days, unfortunately.

† I will be continuing teaching, but for only two terms this year as opposed to three (which was exhausting and... exhausting)

†† It needs a new name, for one thing. And I know this is going to drive me up the wall more than any changes to the actual content of the book.

There's a Train Coming

The Skinny on Stereoscopic Films, or, What's Up With 3D?

This is one of those moments where I find myself on the inside of a phenomena which (increasingly) arouses strong opinions from members of the public. In this case, stereoscopic filmmaking - or 3D, for short (even though it's not really 3D and tramples on a term which is used in animation for both stereoscopic and non-stereoscopic work).

I'm currently working on a 3D film in an age (or, more precisely, over the course of a year, starting with James Cameron's Avatar) where 3D technology is being pushed as the next in-thing. And yet there are many detractors, some of whom have some good ammunition for their opinions.

As someone who has been intimately involved with a 3D production, from beginning to end (well, almost - we'll be in theatres in October) I find myself more and more a spokesperson for the technology, if not for the studios who currently are trying to cram every release into a 3D format, whether or not they were meant to be that way.

Let me begin by saying that I enjoy the notoriety of being the resident expert on 3D technology at parties and barbecues whenever the subject arises. Now that I have that out of the way, allow me to bitch...

Everyone keeps asking me: is 3D here to stay? The answer is a conditional "yes". The condition being that film studios understand two things: First, that you can't take a 2D movie and make it 3D using brain-dead rotoscoping software and expect it to be a success; second, that you can't continue charging more for 3D films and not deliver a product that is both a good example of 3D and a relatively good film to boot.

To elaborate:

1)  Since the release of Avatar, there seem to be just as many films released in theatres boasting 3D which were never shot in 3D, nor even envisioned in 3D prior to production. Some examples would be Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. These films were taken by the studios after completion and put through a 2D-to-3D conversion process, using software to rotoscope the 3D effect, frame-by-frame, a process unsupervised by the director.

This process, while handy for converting short bits from 2D to 3D for films which originate in 3D, ignores a very large consideration for those producers and filmmakers who shoot in 3D from the outset: you have to plan to shoot in 3D from the start. You cannot take a script or a shot list for a 2D film and superimpose it onto a 3D film: your set design, your camera lenses, your blocking, your picture editing...so many things change as a result of switching from 2D to 3D. When you simply take a 2D show and auto-render it in faked-out 3D you get something which most viewers - critics and plebes alike - will say isn't necessary. At worst, you get Clash Of The Titans - the current poster child for anyone with an axe to grind about 3D in general and post-converted 3D specifically. Not only was it a weak remake of the original (from what I hear), but the 3D post-conversion was done in two weeks. Two weeks. From what I hear, the subsequent "3D" is ridiculous to view.

2)  Considering that theatres charge a premium for 3D films (about $3 more than usual depending upon where you go - sometimes more), when a poorly rendered post-converted 3D film is released it damages the viability of an already vulnerable new technology. It's one thing if a film is bad, but when it's bad in two dimensions, bad in a crappily-rendered pseudo-third dimension, followed by the sucker punch of having to pay MORE to see it...you get my point. I hope. Movie audiences can be forgiving, but there comes a point of revolt which I can see happening if there aren't enough 3D films released which originate on 3D. Furthermore, the studios do no service to themselves if they don't make a point of clarifying this to audiences: why can't they say when a film is originally shot in 3D? Isn't that a selling point? Likewise, why not be honest and say when a film has been post-converted? If it's a case that no one wants it to be known that their film was post-converted...then why post-convert to 3D in the first place? There's certainly no audience I know that is clamouring for blocky cut-out shapes which look like they were poorly separated from the background using Photoshop. To summarize this point, content is king: the quality of content, not the volume of illegitimate content.

Up until Avatar (and god knows how I long for the day when another film takes its place as the "gold standard"), the greatest accomplishment in 3D technology was the few seconds of the guy in House of Wax, standing outside a theatre with a ping-pong mallet, knocking the ball directly toward the camera. You could imagine people ducking for cover at the time. That was 1953. From that point onward, 3D technology didn't change, largely due to the format never winning over audiences: the films were oft-times gimmicky and there were never enough 3D films at any given time to make it feel as if the aesthetic was going anywhere. With the recent advent of digital cinematography, 3D is much easier (logistically and technically) to achieve. And while I would love someone to make "art" (are you reading this, Wong Kar Wai?), I'm happy if, for the time being, the format stakes its territory in the ghetto where its strengths have always been: action/sci-fi/fantasy - hey, if it works, why not? I don't hear anyone clamouring for a 3D Terms of Endearment...

Technicians and filmmakers are doing their part: they are taking a risk and trying to push forward innovatively with something daunting and new. Is 3D here to stay? Again, a conditional "yes". What we need are studios and theatre chains to be honest with the audience and not do irreparable damage to the very thing they are hoping to profit from.

Why You Should See "SUCK" (And Why It Shouldn't Have To Be On DVD)

In 2008/9, I worked on the indie feature, SUCK. It's a rock-and-roll vampire road-movie comedy directed by Toronto's Rob Stefaniuk and produced by Capri Films' Robin Crumley. For a low-budget feature (and I realize that's not the best way to preface a compliment) SUCK is well-written, well-cast, funny, and in places very funny.

However, despite being well received at both the Toronto International and South-By-Southwest Film Festivals, it was denied any interest in a theatrical release by Canadian distributors. The longer I waited for someone to pick it up, the more I wondered what the problem was. Sure, you could argue that vampire films have saturated the market lately, but that's seeing things from the late-summer of 2010 (SUCK was completed over a year ago). It was a no-brainer, even for a limited release: who wouldn't like a rock vampire comedy w/ cameos by Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, and Alex Lifeson (among others)? It's the sort of smart-but-not-overly-self-conscious effort which seems perfectly balanced for a theatrical audience.

Nothing happened. Well, actually, less-than-nothing happened: a lot of crap was released in Canadian theatres instead. Crap like the widely-released and quickly forgotten Gunless, which begged the question: if nobody is interested in seeing Westerns in theatres, what could possibly have been the selling point of a comedy-romance-Western with (as you might have guessed) no gunfighting? The answer is that it doesn't matter: this is Canada, and film distributors prefer to release crap like Gunless and GravyTrain than anything which could hold an audience's sustained interest. Evidently, the point of film distribution in Canada is to go through the motions.

Well, it's too late for Canada. While SUCK secured a limited theatrical distribution in the U.S., it's out on DVD here (the US DVD release is September 28th). This means it will only be screened here through niche film festivals. While that's not a bad thing, it pisses me off that a funny, well-produced film (rare creature that is) should be all but abandoned after a successful festival run. This situation is certainly not helped by SUCK's (pardon the pun) anemic website: it makes no mention of any upcoming film screenings, DVD release dates, or even contact information. Who the hell is the site for? This is what happens when you don't have a distributor to help with publicity. Not even the local indie journals can help: NOW Magazine completely omits any mention of it, as a film or DVD release. How's that for hometown support? Thankfully, The Toronto Star's Peter Howell is the only mainstream film critic to put the DVD release of SUCK on public record (in glowing terms no less...and slagging Gunless ).

I want people to see this film. Not because I worked on it, not because I want to punish producers who keep banking on dead-brained populist Paul Gross vehicles, but because this is a worthy film. It's not Sophie's Choice, it's not going to change your life. But you'll laugh. I just wish it had been allowed the opportunity of a theatrical run, which it so clearly deserved. It works better in a theatre than on DVD: with a pumped-up audience rather than in the controlled confines of your livingroom. That said, I will be pleased if, by my writing about it, one more person will see this movie than if I hadn't.

A Life For Abandoned Chairs

I had a lovely interview with Ellen Moorhouse from the Toronto Star about my low-fi photo project, Conversations With Abandoned Chairs. It's now online, so please have a look if you're interested.

More posts coming soon, I swear!

All That Glitters Isn't Oranje

It should come as no surprise that my postings have been less frequent, in proportion to the success or lack thereof of the Dutch at the World Cup, which has just (mercifully) ended.

First: I'm happy we made it to the Final.

Second: I'm happy we lost (even though I wanted us to win at the time).

Allow me to explain: I will always support Oranje, but that doesn't mean I have to suspend my critical faculties while doing so. It also doesn't mean I am living in a nostalgic cloudbank in which Holland must either play soccer like the Kirov ballerinas dance or else they are "cynical" - a word bandied about by once-every-four-years-I-pay-attention-to-soccer pundits.

In case I haven't beaten this point enough, my Oranje is the team of 1998. It always will be. They were beautiful to watch (take a look at my Ryeberg essay if you haven't already) and most aficionados consider that squad the greatest team of the competition, regardless that they lost to Brazil in the semi-finals. The thing is, if you accept that, then you must also accept they were the very same team who flamed-out against Italy in Euro 2000 in the quarters, in perhaps one of the most humiliating games I've seen us play: same squad, folks. How's that for beauty?

The toughest question in the world if you are a Dutch international soccer player: What can you do when the public, the pundits, the former stars from the Golden Age all want to see you play ballet if playing ballet doesn't win anything? Don't get me wrong: I like the Oranje ballet - I am one of those people who can walk away from a loss, still chuffed that we played "as we should". I do side with author David Winner's thoughts about Dutch soccer philosophy, as laid out in his (brilliant) book, Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer. But inevitably you want to win something, and the only silverware the Dutch have is the Euro title in 1988.

This brings us to the present. Sadly. Sadly, because for the most part Oranje did not live up to the philosophy we had come to World Cup 2010 expecting. Under the direction of Bert van Marwijk, they took a detour: individual beauty, sure, when necessary, but collectively less a ballet than an assembly line with a very narrow directive: win, above all else. And they did. They were rusty at first and their games, outside of pockets of that ol' Clockwork Oranje we hoped to see, were not pretty, but they won, and continued to win. Lord, I wanted them to win, too - I was a willing enabler.

When the final against Spain came, I was a nervous wreck. I can only imagine how it must have been in Holland, for those making their way to the Museum Square in Amsterdam where the games were shown for the public. They had come so far, had been through so much, for so many years: 1974, 1978, the glimmer of 1998, the disappointment of missing 2002. So much baggage that you wanted them to win just to shake off the voodoo of the past.

But as I got prepared that morning I visualized what it would be like if we won, if for the first time ever we won the Cup. Instead of tears of joy, I have to tell you, I saw that it would have felt as if we had cheated. As if in winning, we had not done so as ourselves but as a cunning machine, as if someone had invented a "Dutch Soccer Team" to take our place. I cannot describe how difficult it was to deal with that: to stare at a historic vindication within reach of your fingertips, knowing simultaneously there was something inherently inauthentic about it. In fact, had we won, I fear the "victory" would have irrevocably punctured the heart of Dutch soccer, as opposed to the bittersweet reality I live with now: we lost, Dutch soccer is merely dented. Coach van Marwijk's corporatist approach has been repudiated, that is for sure. What I don't know is who or what, philosophically speaking, has been vindicated, since we are bridesmaids once again.

Perhaps it is our souls? I can't speak for yours, but mine is in a better if not exactly comfortable place right now.

Photo: Queen W. & Vanauley

Ryeberg Article is Up!

Hello all,

As previously mentioned, my first "curated video" essay for Ryeberg is now online. Enjoy.

Photo: Behind Clouds

Photo: Self-Portrait @ Queen W. & Augusta

Ryeberg

I should note that I've contributed a few pieces of work to an innovative website, called Ryeberg. The conceit of the site is user-contributed curated YouTube videos, narrated by personal essays on a variety of topics. I am in revision-mode currently, but when my stuff gets posted, I'll let you know. In the meantime, feel free to visit.

Fiction Excerpt: Cloud Species

I've labelled myself a fiction writer in my bio - I've certainly mentioned my writing here and there - yet I have never posted any work on this blog. Why? Well, mainly for fear of publishing something which would contravene most lit journals' definition of "unpublished". How am I getting around this? Well, at least for now, I am providing an orphaned excerpt - I don't know what it belongs to, so please consider this a "work in progress". Well...maybe I do know what it belongs to, but I think it's safe to upload it, for now at least.)

Cloud Species (excerpt)

Something made the hedge in front of the porch shake, as if shook by a hand reaching out of the ground. I would've leaned forward to look closer, but I was exhausted from the previous night. There – it happened again. I could hear dry twigs cracking. The morning sun approached my feet on the floor of the porch, the volume of civilization rising slowly around me: coffee grinders, piano lessons, radios. Yet I couldn't see a soul. I was alone, focused on the hedge, curious what made it move. I didn't want the sun to touch me yet.

She left a newspaper behind but I didn't touch it. It was sitting in the sun. She must have been up earlier than me. Perhaps she'd been up all night until now? I didn't want her gifts and I didn't want the troubles of the world to make rain from the cloudy anger hanging in my head. I sat brooding in a Muskoka chair asking myself what exactly I'd expected to have happened the night before, instead of what did.

It was a robin. It ran out from the hedge onto the yard, took one look at me, head cocked to the side, momentarily frozen. It was hunting. It seemed more threatening than I could be, sitting staring at it helplessly, drinking coffee like it was an antidote for paralysis.

I asked myself why I'd gone to bed so early. Why before then I'd drank so much, so quickly. Why I'd bothered making the trip if I was so exhausted in the first place. I couldn't answer any of it. I wasn't allowing myself to. It was like staring at long division on a chalkboard: I could see the numbers but didn't want to understand where they came from.

The bird carried on with its sweep of the yard, unconcerned by my presence. The sunlight crept closer to my feet, my head was stuffed with thoughts, a jumble of unconnected ideas which became words scribbled over each other, my coffee cup was empty and I knew I'd have to creep up the stairs in order to get more. Past her, sleeping. Sleeping, I hoped, alone.

Conversations With Abandoned Chairs

I'm not sure why it hasn't occurred to me to post this here yet, but perhaps this gives an indication of how stretched my resources are at the moment. Over the last year, whenever I've come across an abandoned chair on the side of the road, I've taken a picture: a photo which does the abandoned chair justice. This has grown into a small collection of photos (with people submitting their own finds recently). I thought I would share. You can see the collection on my (ugh) Flickr site - just follow this link to see the set Conversations With Abandoned Chairs.

Cellphoto: Condo Fire

[Sent via BlackBerry]

The Hammer (pt. 1)

When I rented a car and went to Brantford/Onondaga to do some reminiscing and photo-taking, I knew that Hamilton was also, ultimately, on my to-do list.

The aim of these trips is not preconceived. This makes it doubly hard to explain to others (friends, strangers, and loved ones) what exactly the hell I'm planning to do. "Taking pictures and stuff." I'll say - that's certainly no lie, but of course there's more to it. The thing about Zen is this: the second you begin to describe it, it disappears. And so - Art & Zen being the same - there's always a scaffolding I build around my explanation for these trips. It's the same scaffolding I use when I go out writing, or to take photos locally: a vague (yet not untrue) reason which allows me to unspoil the inspiration (which itself needs to be vague) while preventing others from thinking I've lost my mind. I'm not uncomplicated.

Hamilton, being a place of the past for me, exists in patches of haze - this isn't to say I did a lot of drinking or drugs when it was a destination, and yet it seems that way: murky. Of course, a good chunk of that time is best forgotten now. The downtown seems more hollowed-out than it did before, with the exception of Gore Park which to this day reminds me what a good idea it is to have spacious downtown promenades.

It was a precursory destination. First, with an ill-fated relationship which spawned a series of bad decisions which I owe to naivety. I am not alone in stating that I owe many mistakes in my 20s to naivety. It all culminated in a brief tenancy at an old apartment building north of St. Joseph's hospital. In so many ways, it was one of the more excruciating periods in my life - I think the haze I mentioned previously is partially there to protect me from looking too closely at things like this.

The second identity Hamilton had for me happened a few years later when, staying with relatives in Burlington while I studied at college, it became a "big city" to escape to. Toronto was bigger, of course, but it was too far to drive to just to have kicks. Hamilton was perfect and in the early 90s had a great nighttime scene in and around Hess Village. My hang-out was the Bauhaus Café, which sadly (though not surprisingly) no longer exists.

Walking around there now, it seems as if parts of it just gave up. People don't even want to advertise on billboards. To be fair, I shouldn't make any judgments without going there again, but on a Friday night - I'm afraid however that these judgments will only skew worse if I do.

Perhaps I have a better understanding of the haze now: it's there to protect my feelings, it's there to protect the city from the cold light of an unsympathetic audience.

Cahill's Probability: the inexplicable yet consistent > (greater-than) 50% chance that the label you attempt to read will be showing the French side.

Imagine walking into an empty room.

There is a baseball bat on the ground.
Sitting above it is a lead crystal vase atop a waist-height pedestal.
Written in large letters on the vase are the words: HIT ME.


(This is what enters my mind when I encounter self-righteousness.)

Honesty, After Dark

A continuous problem I have throughout the social media spectrum, the main culprits being Facebook and Twitter, is that - once you get to the point where you have your sister's husband as your "friend", once the guy you barely talked to in high-school is "following" you - you are no longer able to be, well, honest anymore. You cannot post as a status update "Gary is an asshole" without, ultimately, answering to Gary (or his pot-smoking live-in partner, or your co-workers who are largely idiots). You can't even be vague: "Some guy I know is being an asshole.". People will know who you're talking about - context leaves clues people can find. Gary will get mad and want answers.

Oh, you can be honest, alright. You can lay it on the table all you want, but with the inevitable consequence of offending people and getting in trouble for it. In other words, there's nowhere to hide online. This is why I wish there were Bizarro social media sites like, say, Facebook After Dark and Undercover Twitter. Places where you can say the things you really want to say about the people you're "friends" with, the people you "follow", without fear of recrimination. I think we would all be happier as a result.

You reading this, Gary?

(P.S. There is no "Gary", in case anyone is wondering. I don't really have co-workers either) - ed

Mobile: March 9, 2010 - Walking

Photo: March 10, 2010 @ 6:45am - Nassau & Spadina

Dreams

(Over on Ward Six, there was a post about dreams and the use of dreams in one's writing. This is my response/non-response to that post.)

Dreams, without exploding into a cavalcade of pet-theories, feed our experiences back to us as deconstructed information. Familiar objects and people are shuffled, perhaps not randomly, and re-proposed to us. As reality.

I am haunted by dreams still. Dreams I had when I was a child. Nightmares. Fantasies. No wonder. When you are growing up, the easel upon which your dreams are painted is like an IMAX screen: massive, all-encompassing, as close to real as it gets. As you get older, as you obtain experience, as your field of vision and reason begins to vibrate independently - in other words, as you become an individual - dreams cease to take centre stage. They exist and appear just as often as before, but for some reason their weight and impact is lessened.

And yet, a handful of times every year (it's so hard to pin-down because they disappear into the ether like clear helium balloons) I will have a dream which haunts me throughout the morning (if not the day). It is those dreams I try to write down. Some I make into short stories as realities. Some, I incorporate into long fiction as, well, dreams.

Dreams are language. They vex interpretation, yet I feel there is nothing arbitrary about their construct. I fancy: somewhere in our sleeping minds an architect awakens and sorts through our lives, our goals and fears, our friends and enemies, our passions and hatred. This architect then casts a mold: fluid, non-dimensional, mantic. And it is this we are exposed to in our vulnerable slumber.

We wake up and try, often in vain, to make sense of it. And yet I think the most sense we will ever make of our dreams is by not interpreting them at all but allowing them to stand on their own. Allow them to stand as imponderable totems, sculpted by a subconscious architect: haunting, monolithic riddles. They represent the need for non-linearity in our lives.

I'll Show You Stupid

Possibly the worst tactical mistake you can make, politically, is to make fun of an opponent's lack of intelligence. I say this because not only is there an influx of politically active people on the world stage who fall under the category of "lacking intelligence", but there is an absence of memory about how publicly scorning such people only empowers them (and, most importantly, voters).

It's hard. When someone says something completely false - and stupid - the well-educated person's knee-jerk instinct is to say "You're an idiot". Fair enough. But, it's the taunting that backfires. For example, look at Sarah Palin. I think she represents a necessary evil in American politics: a self-elected Voice of The People who campaigns on the rather wispy argument that the US is run by a bunch of elitists who don't understand "real Americans". It's all a bunch of crap (by elite, do you mean they have an education? don't you want the people running your country to have an education? to have seen something beyond the borders of your own country for sake of perspective? who the hell are 'real Americans'? does this imply 'false Americans'?), but it serves its purpose. And what do her critics - who, to be fair, constitute most of the people on the Earth - do? They make fun of her.

She's an idiot. A moron.

The problem is, she's a moron who appeals to a growing number of disenfranchised people who are looking for a proud, politically and morally uncomplicated banner to wave proudly over their heads. And yes, we can argue about why this is and who the supporters are, but - not to say that history is a 1:1 reflection of the future, because it's not - history has shown that history doesn't give a shit about those questions. Reflection happens in the future - that is, after we politely chortle to ourselves at all the nonsense of Palin, her "Tea Party", and her scads of uncivilized minions. That is, after they take the next election.

The elitist/commoner non-argument (it's a ploy, really) is as old as politics itself. We've had something very similar (and thankfully, tamer) happen in Canada. Our current government is a coalition of reformer factions who merged in the late 90s/early 00s to take over the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party (this would be the same as if the current "Tea Party" took over the Republican Party). They removed the word Progressive from the name and lead the country as a minority government. They too campaigned (and still do, whilst in power no less) as the party of the People, as an alternative to whomever stands against their policies (aka "the elites"). It's old hat.

Before they came into power, they - as the Alliance Party - tried very hard to unseat the ruling Liberal government (tangent: can you imagine if the US had a party called the Liberal Party?). Their leader was a man named Stockwell Day, who rode onto the scene (quite literally) on a Sea Doo. He was all charisma and commonality. But as time wore on, people found that his reformist ideas weren't very deep and a lot of the people in his party were either yahoos or - elitists? - began distancing themselves away from him. The chrome on his veneer began to chip away and the man became a running gag; the Prime Minister of the day, Jean Chretien, joked openly that he preferred having Day in opposition (as to suggest his chances were that much better to win elections against the Alliance). Long story short, all it took was a few years, a "unite the right" movement, and a new leader who could streamline (that is, squelch) internal strife and you had a winner. That is to say, the toppling of a government.

I suppose what I'm saying is this: making fun of people like Sarah Palin because she doesn't come across as polished, or sophisticated, or well-educated is ineffective. All you manage to do is inflame the passions of people - many of whom may have been too lethargic or apathetic to vote in the first place - so that they start creating local campaign offices. There is nothing like being intellectually offended to raise someone's ire - anyone's, no matter where or how they were raised. Raise the ire, that is, so as to make them active agents on behalf of those scorned by the "elites". Agents of "change".

George W. Bush was publicly derided by intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike in almost every conceivable medium and venue, yet he served two four-year terms as President of the US. If you want to take down the likes of Palin, take her down as you would take down Reagan or Thatcher - that is, as an opponent worthy of debate, worthy of your concern. To do less would be to knot your own noose.

Cellphoto: Happy Endings

[Sent via BlackBerry]

Our Home and Masochistic Land

Historically, Canada has never even been close to placing first in the medal-count of the Winter Olympics. We are, after all, an exceptionally large country with an inversely proportionate population: I'd be stretching the truth if I said we had 35 million people here.

So, when I read last week that the Canadian Olympic Committee had boasted that (no this time) we were going to take first place in Vancouver a small part of me projectile-vomited across the room. It was upsetting because this ridiculous aim (summed up by the mantra Own The Podium) is something only bureaucrats can cook-up.

News to the COC: it's not like our athletes haven't tried their damnedest in the past. It's not like they didn't "get" the whole gold thing until now. They've never wanted to do anything but put in their best, but the problem - population aside - is typically Canadian: a miserable lack of funding, organization, and foresight. Only in Canada could we create an organization like the COC, with their shallow-sounding boardroom boasts which read more like something from a corporate motivational lecture ("What Colour Is Our Olympic Athlete's Parachute? GOLD!").

It adds insult to injury because there simply is no chance in hell that we are going to top the medal count, this Olympics or any to come. I'm saying it aloud: there is no...well, you get the idea. Heck, I'd be happy if we top Russia. The facts don't lie: despite our northernness, our wintry and sporting dispositions, we simply don't have the population to consistently support a proportionately competitive Olympic powerhouse, especially when up against the U.S. which has 10 more people to every one of ours! In retrospect, we should all be getting mad-drunk with delight! We're currently fifth in the freaking world, in spite of our pathetic sports infrastructure, despite our catch-us-while-you-can stagnant population growth, in spite of corporatist "iceholes" (if I may quoth Colbert) in the COC putting a bragging chip on our shoulder that we didn't need in the first place.

There should be a banner flying at the top of Whistler, just underneath the Canadian flag, with the phrase: "We're Actually Doing Pretty Damn Good".

Seriously.

“If you don't get what you want, it's a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.”

– Rudyard Kipling

Photo: McCaul Street Post #3

The Sky is Falling (Very Slowly), or, Will The Real Science Please Stand Up

The problem with having a belief in something which happens to be provocative (and by provocative, I mean something which is not embraced by the whole and which may be a bit thorny for some) is that, like in most aspects of life, all it takes is a few zealots to make you look like a fool by ideological proximity.

As I pointed out many moons ago (December of 2006!) when it comes to climate change (as opposed to the slightly misleading term global warming), outside of blind ignorance our greatest liability are people who jab an accusatory finger at every natural disaster and scream "You see! It's global warming! Climate change caused this! If we don't do something NOW we are doomed as a species!". For me, it started with Hurricane Katrina, when people (a fantastic percentage of whom had no scientific accreditation) began to suggest that it simply wasn't an old-school "act of nature", but rather something to be blamed upon worldwide environmental collapse (as if New Orleans didn't have enough problems to contend with). It fed into a grand conspiracy theory which gave certain people a quixotic reason to exist: that mankind was the chief culprit all along, and that it was only a question of years to fix it. Cue epilogue of Planet Of The Apes.

On the other (self-evident to the point where I wonder whether it's worth mentioning) end of the spectrum are the usual assortment of deep-pocketed corporate "carbon monoxide is good for you" state polluters, and knee-jerk libertarian radio hosts who feel that idling their cars is akin to patriotism (and, as an aside, the whole libertarian-patriot thing seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?).

The thing is this, panic aside: I do believe in climate change. All that shit turning to water north of us (that would be the Arctic ice) is a sign. Much less lachrymose is all that science, provided by all those scientists, which pretty much confirms that, yes, climate change is real, and that, yes, human industry is a variable in its occurrence. The issue of how the future is looking as a result of climate change is less clear. The problem is this: remember those largely non-scientific people blaming Hurricane Katrina on climate change? The ones telling us that if we don't do something NOW then the world's a goner? They got a lot of attention; the cameras kept rolling. This was probably just a knee-jerk reaction of mass media which was (and is) delighted to scare the public any chance they get (it keeps ratings up). Well guess what: some scientists found that if they used the same sort of seismic analogies and kept the ticking clock of doom just a few minutes away, not only would they get attention, but they could get funding.

Inevitably, it had to end - the speculative bubble that is. You can only say that we have five more years to change the world for five years until people start asking why societies haven't collapsed like the finale of an Irwin Allen movie. And then someone or some group hacked into the records of some climate scientists and found that some of them were acting like jerks, that some of them didn't want to play nice with their facts (unlike all those journalists and columnists we read). To me, this was heart-breaking, because it allowed both honest sceptics and partisan political hacks alike to pull a j'accuse and call it Climategate (seriously, I look forward to a world without the silly and dated gate suffix) and call the science itself into question, as opposed to the questionable actions of a few. Some have hinted that the bad publicity fall-out could set climate science back by a decade if increased public persecution gets worse. However, I feel this is as likely as, well, the world ending in five years.

The good news is that the world hasn't ended; neither our world, nor the world of science. If anything, reading today's op-ed by Margaret Wente in the G&M, even people who previously took every opportunity to deny the existence of climate change are now looking at things plainly: no pro trumped-up worries about imminent global catastrophe, and no con lefty/green/hippy bullshit stereotypes. If anything, perhaps bringing those few scientists into the spotlight has, post whatever-gate, calmed everyone down a notch. Perhaps enough so that we will be able to parse our language into something which does not use fear as a means of persuasion. Perhaps so that we won't dilute the meaning of words like green and sustainable to homeopathic degrees.

I believe (or at least I hope) we can find an entry-point where we can use science and research rather than propaganda and fear to motivate ourselves to improve our prospects (that is, both human prospects and business prospects, two things which have not always shared mutually fulfilling goals). It is heartening to see that there may be an X-Prize for fuel/energy production, similar to what was done for sub-orbital exploration. I'd also like it if we could reboot the message of environmentalism with a good 'ol back-to-basics mantra of: use less (as in packaging, unnecessary products, natural resources). I will be happy, even if it is all a hopelessly lost cause, that we go down working on something together as opposed to a Purgatory of scoring political points against ourselves.

Photo: Stunned

You Can't Be Everything To Everybody (Actually You Can, But It's Boring)

I like jazz music, even though I am not an authority on the genre. Heck, I like all genres of music. I may not have a lot of pure country & western on my shelf but without C&W a lot of the music I love (and do have on the shelf) would not exist. Period. Music, if it's possible to talk about it in such broad terms, is a wide-spanning ecosystem where every genre and sub-genre makes an eventual impact on the whole [insert pebble/ocean analogy here].

There is a jazz radio station in Toronto that I listen to (that is, when I want to listen to jazz), named Jazz.FM91 - or, less formally, JazzFM. They have some great programming (The Big Band Show with Glen Woodcock is a fave) and some great hosts (Heather Bambrick, Walter Venafro). I even like the guy who reads the news in the morning (Tim Keele, with that old-school newsman voice). Aside from a couple of annoyances, there wasn't much to dislike.

The problem is, similar to what plagues public broadcasters, in trying to appeal to a wide audience (and it should be noted that JazzFM is supported by donations) they end up playing a lot of crap which makes me lunge for the remote to change the channel: Joni Mitchell doing jazz, jazz musicians covering Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello doing "swing" versions of his own songs. Overall, an overdependence on middle-of-the-road lyrical jazz of the sort that elevator manufacturers would consider too ironic to use as background music.

It used to be easy to avoid the bad programming: namely, Ralph Benmurgui's morning show (the man insists on sucking all the oxygen out of the control room...seriously, if someone mentioned that a 737 hit a dog on a runway in Mexico, Benmurgui would instantly quip: "You know, I was in this great airport in Puerto Vallarta last winter where they served this wonderful coffee! And let me just say to our Mexican listeners: ¡Le deseamos el mejor!") and their choice of the syndicated Sunday morning program, Radio Deluxe (where hosts John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey play an assortment of jazz classics performed almost soley by - wait for it - John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey! Here's a lesson to all you starving artists: if those royalty cheques aren't coming in fast enough, just start a show where you can program your own work).

However, lately, outside of these distractions I've had to lunge for the remote more and more. JazzFM is becoming synonymous with all the clichés that keep people under the age of 55 from listening (or considering listening) to jazz: the first, that "jazz" is a never-ending series of earnestly pedantic covers of songs such as "I Can See Clearly Now" and "Aguas de Marco". The second, that everything you need to program a jazz-based radio station is contained in the Blue Note CD box set (seriously: I pulled this out last year and began listening to all 5 CDs, and I had to stop because I realized this was practically half of JazzFM's playlist).

In the end, I fear JazzFM is becoming just another Top-40/Oldies radio station. This is great news for Michael Bublé and Diana Krall - can anyone name an original composition either of them has written? But what of people who've never experienced anything but the mention of Oscar Peterson's name? Did Miles Davis stop creating music after 1960? In case anyone from the station is reading this (or not), I'm not asking for the Jolly Roger to be flown over the JazzFM building - what I'm asking is whether the middle of the road (which is where they seem to be sitting) needs to be so damned narrow.

It Was a Dark and Mysterious Person

"You are a dark and mysterious person." said my friend Simon.

We were chatting on Facebook and he had mentioned how closely we had rated to one another's tastes on the movie-rating application, Flixster. That's when I told him I'd deleted it a few months ago: the application, my ratings, my mini-reviews, my Flixster identity. I also did the same for the iLike application (also on Facebook), which rates music. And I did the same on the Internet Movie Database: I simply removed myself (the opinions, not my professional identity).

I needed to clean house, to remove clutter, and - most importantly - to get away from being an armchair critic. There are too many people playing "expert" out there and I didn't want to be one of them because it becomes a game of oneupmanship. This isn't even to mention the fact that all of the Facebook applications keep information on file about you, that, while you are wittily commenting on the 2nd season of MadMen, you are becoming a company's marketing demographic.

I wanted no part in it. I also began to feel that, the more I expressed my opinions - witty or not, bitter or not, funny or not - the smaller I felt. This is not to criticize self-expression, but rather to say that I became sensitive to the format I chose.

I'd rather bitch about things here, on my doorstep, or on Twitter, than simply be another anonymous puppy yelping on yet another movie/music/placenamehere database.

It's also healthy to eliminate your identity from time to time, not unlike the transformational qualities of a forest fire: clearing the brush and the remnants of what is dead but still lingering.

(disclosure: I'm a Scorpio and this sort of thing comes naturally to me, and no, I have no problem saying something like "I'm a Scorpio.")

Photo: The Other Oxford Street

Photo: Antwerp - Church Reflected #3

Impetus

Since the beginning of 2010 (I still can't adjust to typing that without staring out the window to see if there are flying cars in the sky) I've felt change is imminent for me. Whereas last year seemed to be a boat load of life coming straight at me, the inverse seems to be conjuring its way into this year - I feel more connected to surroundings, and better able to manipulate (if I may use the word manipulate in the best possible way) the outside world, the not I (to quote Krishnamurti).

This is not to say that I've got all of the problems with life, the world, or myself sorted out (ha!), but rather I feel a greater impetus to direct energy outward to affect change; to raise my own hurdles rather than wait for life to throw me hers.

I just don't know the details of how this energy will manifest yet - I'm listening intently. Perhaps small steps: publishing my short fiction to this here blog, and/or showcasing others'? Alternately, putting a cap in this blog entirely and moving on to something different. Shifting to work more with my own media rather than with others'. Sparks. You see: the light of change. Inarticulate still, but pulsing with activity, from the inside out.

Photo: Millennium Bridge Self-Portrait

Photo: Nassau Street