Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Polar Vortex, Shani Mootoo (Toronto: Book*hug, 2020) Polar Vortex opens with a dream. Priya, a lesbian of Indian descent, immigrant from Trinidad, now settled with her white spouse, Alex, in white bread Prince Edward County, awakes from the riotous colours of an Indian wedding ritual which culminates in sex with a man, not with any…
Oddly enough, successful street photography is a bit like catching a virus. I say this because, as with catching a virus, street photography requires a lot of exposure. Not camera sensor exposure, but exposure to people interacting in public places.
As in The Lonely City, Laing views today’s funny weather as a continuation of gusts we felt in the early days of AIDS when the Reagan administration chose not merely to do nothing but actively to make life miserable for hundreds of thousands of those infected.
This tetralogy is a remarkable achievement, offering a clear-eyed view of the times without resorting to the usual maudlin emotions—outrage, disbelief. Instead, through her wise art, she offers us reassurance.
After lunch, I ran across the road to get a few things for supper and as I stepped through the entrance to the mall, I noticed an older man lying on the floor stretched out on his side. In particular, I noted his blue mask which gave an odd splash of colour to an otherwise…
If the colour yellow was an animal, it would be a cat. It simply is and doesn’t care what you think. It bursts in upon your world whether you like it or not.
There is a temptation to treat Arendt like the American Psychiatric Association’s DSMV: if an authoritarian leader meets enough of the documented criteria, then we can diagnose him with the political disease called totalitarianism.
When we reached the Ontario/Québec border, we had to wait to pass through a blockade where soldiers stopped each car and questioned the driver. It was the first time I had ever seen soldiers walking around with guns. I had no idea what to make of it.
cellular breakdown draws our thoughts to death, but seen afresh, it reveals an act of generosity
Too long; didn’t read. Like LOL when Facebook became a thing, TL;DR is a viral acronym that has taken on a sudden relevance. Once an occasional rat scampering from a sinking mass of text, now the TLDR rodent is everywhere. Typically, it’s offered as a complaint about the length of a text, but its resurgence…
It has become a commonplace to observe that the Covid-19 pandemic exposes some of the weaknesses inherent in the way we organize ourselves as social beings. For example, through the mechanisms of the capitalist labour market, we have collectively agreed that certain modes of work are not terribly important. We know this because we don’t…
They are obnoxious. They remind me of city neighbours who go at one another across balconies. They honk louder than city cars. They’re filthy. They carpet the shoreline in green knots of shit.
A photograph is an instance, not an aggregate. A photograph is an anecdote, not a trend. A photograph is a rumour, not a fact.
Through offhand remarks which strike us today as thoroughly gratuitous, de Kruif allows his own personality to infect his stories with sexism, racism, anti-immigrant sentiments, and a wide assortment of other bigotries that, were he alive today, would make him the darling of Trump’s White House.
There are 478 new infections in Ontario, the most on a single day since May 2nd. This includes 153 new cases in Toronto.There is something about this I find dispiriting. The number itself is not dispiriting so much as what the number tells me about human nature.