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Anna Rabinowitz, whose poetry I have reviewed here and here, has collaborated with composer, Stefan Weisman, to create what they describe as an “experimental opera – theatre work” called Darkling which they have released as a two-CD recording from Albany Records. The libretto draws upon a book-length poem of the same name which Rabinowitz published ten years ago, which in turn is built (as an acrostic) upon the poem by Thomas Hardy, A Darkling Thrush.

I bookended 2011 with two large novels. In January, I read Witz, by Joshua Cohen, a sprawling brilliant novel which I would set on my shelf beside the likes of Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest. In December, I read 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, also a sprawling novel which at least one critic has likened to War and Peace and Infinite Jest. I had decided to read it on the strength of another review in The Millions, a rave of a review if ever there was one, by Kevin Hartnett, which concludes with: When life wears us down, great fiction gives us back our human shape. Oh great, I said to myself, I’ll sit myself down with this behemoth of a novel and submit to a transformative experience.

Every year begins with certain literary rituals. The first is to pay homage to Public Domain Day – the acknowledgment of literary works which have passed into the Public Domain and therefore are no longer subject to copyright law. Because copyright terms vary from country to country, one must be careful. In the U.S., for example, the Duke Law School’s Centre for Study of the Public Domain wryly notes: “Once again, we will have nothing to celebrate this January 1^st.” Thanks to the efforts of poor and starving artists like Sonny Bono, nothing new will pass into the U.S. Public Domain until 2019. I’m glad he smashed into a tree. He couldn’t sing anyways.

Below is perhaps the most sentimental short story I’ve ever written. It involves death, relationships, and all that stuff. I have also posted it on Smashwords in case you want to download a free copy for your ereader. Here is the short description I provided there: “When a novelist learns that he is dying, he resolves to write two final works as gifts to his children. He completes the first for his son in short order, but as he begins the second, he falters. His daughter must reconcile herself to the possibility that he might never finish his gift to her.”

Death Wishing is the debut novel from Laura Ellen Scott whose chapbook, Curio, I featured here earlier this year. It’s hard to know how to classify Death Wishing. Magic realism, perhaps, although it behaves much like science fiction, with a single wild premise producing conflict that drives the action, and characters who reveal themselves as they confront the conflict. See J.G. Ballard’s Drowned World for an example of the sci-fi paradigm. Here, the single wild premise is this: as people die, their final wish comes true. Cancer is a distant memory. Cats are now extinct. Elvis returns (was he ever gone?) Mothers grow a third eye in the back of their head. But this new phenomenon has its problems. Whatever mysterious power grants these wishes has a legalistic brain, reminding us of the old adage: be careful what you wish for. When a dying woman of generous intent wishes everyone could have a thousand dollars, people with millions of dollars are devastated at their loss.

Have you heard the news? Publishers Weekly reports that a Japanese insurance company purchased Toronto-based ebook seller, Kobo, for $315 million dollars. My initial response registered somewhere in the anger/betrayal range of the emotional spectrum. Rather than spend a lot of time bitching, I channeled that anger into a poem.reading underwater,
words burble and pop
in the light up there,
the bright crisp, while
kobo kobo kobo
the well-oiled pistons
of the juggernaut
metal leviathan
jaws wide, throat
ready to swallow
swim, you minnows,
you selfish
shelf-ish shell
fish, you inky
preoccupied
octopi, swim,
you albacore
and dolphins and
plankton, don’t
forget the plankton
kobo kobo kobo
with its sonar
and torpedoes dark
the underbelly hull
swim, for reading
is at a premium
now the looming mass
of capital slicks
over the deep, its
killing drops adrift
on the roiling swell and
seep into our scales
still it rumbles on
kobo kobo kobo
circling overhead
for another pass

I dreamt I died and went to heaven. When I got there, they told me there was no such thing as print media. They said: books are physical things, but we, as incorporeal spirit beings, have no fingers to turn the pages. I asked if they had heard about digital media. They laughed at my naivety and reminded me that I would still need fingers to touch a touchscreen. What do we do for reading, then? They could tell I was distressed. Reading? We don’t read; we remember. So for a thousand years I lay on a beach remembering all the books I had read when I was alive. I was glad I had read many books, for my remembrances were rich and gave me pleasure. But when I began my second thousand years, I realized that I was weak when it came to poetry. I had read enough of it, but found it difficult to remember. They commiserated with me. Yeah, they said, it’s a bitch trying to memorize poetry—especially anything written after the 20^th century. So now I sit with sand up my crack, a little bit bored, cursing those bastards, those poets, for leaving none of their words lodged in my head.

A year and a half ago, Toronto-based Kobo launched a bare bones eReader to give its biggest competitor, Amazon, a run for its money. It was a decent offering supported by a decent library (2.2 million titles and counting) especially when you consider the behemoth it was battling. See my review here. Kobo followed up with wifi and a touch-screen version of the eReader. Now we have an Android-based tablet, the Kobo Vox for CDN $199, again aimed to provide a discount alternative to the behemoth. While the reviews have been luke-warm at best, empiricist that I am, I had to see for myself if the Kobo Vox is any good. I have set out my review below as a series of pros and cons, but first a general remark: I bought this device in a book store. I didn’t buy it at an Apple Store or Future Shop or Best Buy. It wasn’t sold to me as a tablet that I could incidentally use as an eReader; it was sold to me as an eReader with tablet-like functions. Right there on the box it says: “Kobo Vox eReader.” If you buy this device as a cheap way to get your hands on a tablet, then a) you’re not paying attention, and b) you will be disappointed.

No, this post is not about the T.S. Eliot play, but about an episode I’m writing as my excuse to participate in NaNoWriMo – the discovery of a body in a church and subsequent revelation that the priest had been having sex with the victim (when she was still alive). My aim is to take this news story and embed a fictional adaptation of it into a larger novel I’m working on. The curious thing is that when I revisit the news reports, I discover that my brain’s faulty memory has already done the adapting for me. For example, I could have sworn that the victim was a prostitute. I could have sworn that the priest had reached out to her as part of some kind of pastoral program. I could have sworn that the murderer, the custodian, had been motivated either by a desire to protect the priest from the corrupting influence of a prostitute, or by jealousy springing from some homoerotic rage, or both. It turns out there is no way to come up with any of this from the facts. It turns out it all comes from my own sick brain.

This morning you may have heard the starting gun for NaNoWriMo or the erroneously named National Novel Writing Month. It really should be GloNoWriMo, substituting Global for National. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world try to write at least 1,666 words each day for 30 consecutive days at the end of which (theoretically) they will have completed a 50,000 word short novel. Since I’m in the middle of another writing project, my participation will be spotty. However, I intend to be a hanger-on, a leach, a general parasite. At the very least, I’ll be borrowing the discipline of writing every day, the accountability of posting my word count in a public place, and the energy of dabbling with a community of like-minded writers.

My wife is an active alumnus of a summer camp in Longford Mills on the north eastern shore of Lake Couchiching. Every fall, staff, alumni, and friends of the camp gather for a weekend of work and fun. The object is to close down the camp for the winter, taking in docks, storing boats and equipment, cleaning out cabins, clearing out dead wood and chopping it. One of my chores was to rake leaves. There are a lot of leaves in a forest, which means the raking takes a long time. It’s repetitive and, as happens with me and repetitive tasks, my mind starts to wander. I had been reading a book by Mircea Eliade the night before and that helped fuel my wandering mind. Actually, my mind never really wanders; it’s more like a NASCAR race with a pileup against a wall.

Note: Part way through writing this piece of flash fiction, I got my testicles caught in a band saw. Industrial accidents are a horrible thing. Always wear protective clothing.

Half-choked Blooms
I give my best to the morning
and the balance to the afternoon
in the half-choked blooms of the roses
and the thorny brambles of a dying quince.

I observed this sign on the wall beside the door at 457 Bathurst St., Toronto. The location looks to be abandoned or at least between tenant/owners. In that tautological Yogi Berra sort of way, these are words to live by. Now pay attention!

A question about the Occupy Movement: where is the Church? October 15^th was supposed to be a global day of action, and by all accounts, it was successful, drawing crowds in cities all around the world. But where was the Church in all of this? The question was posed in Religion Dispatches nearly two weeks ago in the context of the Occupy DC protest, but it seems to apply everywhere else too. The news reveals isolated instances of church involvement. St. Paul’s Cathedral has granted sanctuary to protesters in London. And I heard (but haven’t verified) that St. James Cathedral has extended the same courtesy to protesters in Toronto should the need arise. Scanning the crowd in Toronto, I recognized a couple clergy, but none there as representatives of the institutions they serve. And virtually nothing that could be construed as an official statement, an encouraging word, an expression of solidarity. Nothing. Not from any denomination.