Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Do you think that I, like Jeremiah,had come to give your soul an enema?I don’t even know the proper orifice.I only wanted to box your ears,smack you upside the head,vent my rage at all you did and said.But those Jews with their predilectionfor over-interpretation, theycalled it something else, something noble.They hoisted me on their shouldersand…
Every week I go to Friends of the Heart for a fix of mindfulness meditation, and half way through we break for some conversation. This week, Gwen, the woman who leads the sits, was commenting on the fact that we in the west have inherited the rationalist mind/body dualism whereas Buddhism treats mind and body as integrated. Then she told a joke:
Barack Obama is our latest Nobel Laureate. The world (or at least that part of the world that thinks the Nobel prize has more credibility than the medal the Wizard pins on the cowardly lion’s chest) is abuzz with the news. Opinions vary.
Google’s Street View has gone live in Toronto. As I blogged in May, Google’s cars were tearing up the streets of Toronto to capture street level images of … well … of whatever happened to be there.
“She looked back and felt a shiver as she caught sight of him in the throng. Their gazes locked across the crowded room. His expression alone sent another shiver through her. There was both challenge and promise in his eyes. It left no doubt. He had recognized her.”
The situation that forms the narrative for this poem struck me as funny and inherently Canadian. I thought I’d be spontaneous and order something I’d never had before. But when the waitress delivered the dish, I realized I couldn’t eat it. The problem is dermatitis herpetiformis, a gluten allergy that leads to mindbending itchiness.
Arrived 8:30 a.m. and the first thing I saw after coming through customs was a pair of police officers dressed in Kevlar and carrying automatic weapons.
As a compulsive bibliophile, I like to browse through used book stores, yard sales and church rummage sales in search of the unusual, the rare, and the weird. For the most part, I’m interested in what lies between the covers.
A place becomes real as it becomes storied. When I was in high school, my home town, Toronto, was about as real to me as Pluto. My English teachers nurtured a quiet bias for writing that came from any place but Toronto. Nothing good ever came from Toronto.
The American type designer, Frederic Goudy, is reputed to have said that “[a]ny one who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep.” That is the source for the title of a wonderful book on type design by Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger: Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works.
A suberbug is coming,an evolved pathogenwith tougher DNA,a variant, a strain.We delude ourselves (they say)to believe we grasp the highestlink of the food chain. I am resistantto the idea that microbesborne on the currentsfrom a spluttered sneezecould abbreviate my teemingPetri dish thoughts. Is penan antigen? Or more the disease? The subject line: SARS andSwine flu…
I cut through the parkand there, tucked in the grasswas a banana, freshfrom the local grocery store,unripe, green tending to yellow,with a label stuckto its thick skin. I felt for a minutethat the sky had crackedand through the crack the wholeweight of recorded timebore down upon me thereand stomped me to the ground:a bug smushed…
Every year, our street hosts a neighbourhood barbeque. We close off the cul-de-sac end of the street—down by the Jeffries—and set up two or three big grills for the meat. There’s a clown and games and face-painting for the kids, and there’s beer and fifty-fifty draws and Alice Kramden’s craft table for the grown-ups.
From the age of twelve until I started university I took piano lessons from a man named Alan who loved to read and always had a book in hand when he rode the subway. I remember after one lesson, maybe in ’78 or ’79, when we were chatting about — who knows — life, the universe and everything — when Alan laughed and told me he was reading Death in Don Mills, by Hugh Garner.
The Canadian government is holding a national copyright consultation from July 20th until Sept 13th, 2009. It’s happening under the auspices of the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, and the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages.