Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
The category, Heart, is for posts that make us feel.
When I was seven, I ran home from school every day so I could watch Batman foil one of the criminals who routinely plagued Gotham City. As often as not, Batman didn’t have to do anything because his bungling foes got caught up in their own schemes at which point Batman, played by the inimitable…
While reading poetry this afternoon, something about its associative nature caused me to wonder: whatever happened to Jeffrey Lidgate. Jeffrey was a childhood friend from elementary school. Lawren Harris P.S. We used to go after school to play at one another’s homes. The Lidgates lived in a small, box-like bungalow on the southwest corner of Elm…
Note to Reader: This story is 4,100 words and takes about half an hour to read. Although the characters share names with me and my wife, these are fictional characters. That should be apparent from the fact that the fictional David Barker is tall and lean. David Barker, tall and lean, beige sport jacket draped…
A couple years after my dad completed an M.Ed. at Syracuse University, a colleague of his enrolled in the same program and, like my dad, uprooted his wife and children for the duration. I remember going to visit them over the winter holidays, driving past the jerry-built townhouses where we had lived, then on to…
I sat chilled and stinking and anxious and repeated it to myself like a mantra: Fuck the police. Fuck the police. Fuck the police.
One girl was on the phone to her mother, almost in tears, saying “Mom, I really fucked up this time.” Others had their heads buried in cell phones trying to book Uber rides which, because of the sudden spike in demand, were priced in the stratosphere.
In the afternoon light, I wade through the reeds and stalk mature dragonflies and damselflies. As I kneel in the water to photograph a dragonfly on a blade of grass, another settles on my back and sits there until I’m done.
Stepping away from the cubicle, I saw that it served a small construction site. A man stood on the sidewalk eating a fruit cup for breakfast and I realized he was probably the foreman. He smiled at me and asked how my day was going. I smiled at him and hiked up my pants and said it was going well thank you; and how’s it going for you?
I return again to the image and wonder if an older man wearing a mask and carrying a book about grief isn’t emblematic of our times. During the pandemic, there are ways in which we all have experienced loss.
Do I really think Canada is dying? I’m not sure. I do think a particular narrative of Canada is dead and gone, didn’t deserve to live in the first place. The better question is whether we can work up a more robust narrative…
At the corner of Yonge and Hayden, a woman was leaning against a utility pole, her back to me, head bowed as if she was texting or scrolling on her smart phone, purse tucked under her right arm. But the kicker was the leopard skin print dress.
Sometimes, when I’m out walking, the city seems to buzz. Thanks to the pandemic and the lockdowns it has required, I haven’t had that feeling for a couple years. But this Sunday was different.
It’s like an Arctic Spring: a winter of desolation and then, suddenly, an explosion of life. Young people with money. Old people out for a stroll and leaning on their canes. Sirens blaring. Schizophrenics screaming at the cars. Things are starting to feel normal again.
I think there’s something offensive about the longstanding tradition that art has a redemptive quality which can magically elevate a man’s misery. Too long it’s been used to justify apathy in the face of unjust social relations.
What distinguishes this downspout is the fact that it’s caked in a layer of bird shit—pigeon shit if specificity is important to you. Pigeons sit on the eaves overhead and, whenever one takes flight, it lightens its load by excreting on the downspout below.