Whether six degrees or three, separation is still separation. Sometimes I feel separation when there are no degrees.
Author: David Barker
Holy Wild, by Gwen Benaway
Even a cursory reading of Holy Wild assaults our senses with a relentless documentation of the many ways a trans woman is despised for who she is. Cries of pain at the violence visited upon her. Lamentations at the betrayals. But also hope. Hope for a new life through a new body and through new relationships that promise understanding.
TPL, TERFs and Pen Canada
So what is all this kerfuffle around the Toronto Public Library (TPL) renting space to Meghan Murphy? And why should it matter to someone like me, a cisgendered, middle-aged white male i.e. the ideal symbolic stand-in for privilege in all its manifestations?
Story: Recursions
Fenton pulled off his belt and shoes and dropped them into the plastic bin along with keys, spare change, wallet, and reading glasses. In another bin, he laid out his carry on, a small backpack in which he had stashed a T-shirt and underwear, tooth brush and deodorant, and a discreet baggy of cocaine.
Stroll Through A Cemetery
As I walked through the cemetery, I found myself entering a Zen state. First was the enveloping silence. As I pressed further into the grounds, the sounds of the city—traffic, construction, shouts—receded and other gentler sounds drew to the foreground…
Open City by Teju Cole
Ostensibly, Open City is the narrative of Julius, a young doctor completing his psychiatric residency at a Manhattan hospital. He is of mixed race which gives him the advantage of a certain flexibility (he straddles cultures) while simultaneously giving him the burden of a certain aloofness (he belongs to nowhere and to no one).
Story: The Gentleman’s Club
— I’m looking for a man who knows me so well he could finish my sentences but loves me so much he keeps his mouth shut.
Sentimentality
Everybody loves a photograph of a smiling baby. Everybody loves a photograph of a kitten playing with a ball of wool. Everybody loves a photograph of a sunset streaking its colours across the sky. Sentimentality has its place, I guess.
Yellow Creek Rehabilitation
This is the endemic neglect one can expect from a long string of mayors and city councillors who have drunk the neoliberal Kool-Aid: slash government, lower taxes, defund social spending on things like public health, social housing, road repair, snow removal, libraries, public parks and, of course, the TRCA.
Two Conversations
His name is Raymond Joseph Robichaud and he was born near St. John NB to a French Canadian mother and Irish/Scottish father, so he is a self-described mongrel. He asked if I could spare some change; he needed money for art supplies. Seriously, he said.
Absolutely on Music, by Haruki Murakami
Absolutely On Music is a series of conversations between novelist Haruki Murakami and conductor Seiji Ozawa. I was too young to remember when Seiji Ozawa was conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1965-1969).
Pathetic Fallacy
One could easily accuse the outlying fog of spying on my inner state, or worse, of manufacturing it by drifting into my ears and eyes and nostrils and gaping mouth, and supplanting my accustomed mental chaos with a vague stillness.
Talking To Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is a public intellectual for people who don’t feel any pressing compunction to think.
The Discovery of Nehru
In Geoff Dyer’s Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, there is a piece called “Jacques Henri Lartigue and the Discovery of India.” It opens with a Lartigue photo “Cap d’Antibes, August 1953”—a woman in a bathing suit…
Climate Strike
I had seen signs around the downtown core declaring a Global Climate Strike on September 26th 2019. Inspired by the outspoken activism of Swedish high school student, Greta Thunberg…