making it up

A New Update to An Old Blog

2011-03-06T08:00:00.001-08:00

{60, 668 words
9/9 chapters done}

Well it certainly has been awhile, but I'm done the book. In fact I've been done for well over a year now. Here are some links to catch you up:

- I had one of my poems published here: http://incongruousquarterly.com/2010/07/a-function-of-violent-games/

- the novel is currently being copy edited (almost done!) by the wonderfull Emma Healey Editor-in-Chief of the incongruous quarterly

- I have been teaching English literature full time for the past year and a half. Check out our class blog: http://kowgier.blogspot.com/

- I just started up a new poetry project: http://theendlesspoem.tumblr.com/

- I am putting together a proposal for the book on kickstarter.com, more info on that soon...

- next week is march break. I will use this rare batch of free time to launch a domain to publish/promote my writing. Stay tuned...

- last but not least here is a brief plot outline of the novel:

comrade calculator is an humanoid female robot built to live indefinitely. Her purpose is to calculate infinity. Over a hundred years later she puts forward an answer. It is a poem. This small poem causes her to lose public support and her government job. To stay alive she ends up working in a museum, as part of an exhibit on Calculation. Soon she begins to moonlight in the Smoking Exhibit. My book tells the story of her various attempts to quit smoking.

Summer's End (part2 of 3)

2009-09-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

{48, 595 words
finishing the 6th of 9 chapters}

The second installment of my end of summer Canadian Ultimate Championships recap written as I waited for a tornado to pass by my airport. Don't worry if the terminology or nicknames don't make sense to you, because that it kind of the point?

Where were we? Let's Review.

Roy had eaten a meal at a large phallus shaped table, at which waitresses admitted to driving drunk and stealing pylons with friends the night before; ladies and gentleman I give you the nightlife of winnipeg. Despite that, said waitresses were asked by Roy if they liked to party, to which their answer does not matter. It is the question itself that is everything: DO YOU LIKE TO PARTY? Five simple words that two men took to a whole new level, paving the party path for an entire team of ROY.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. After dinner everything was a giant question mark: are we playing tomorrow? Indoors? Do we like to party? Is the only party place in town seriously called Whisky Dix? Does it actually have bouncers with cowboy hats?

The answer to those questions were eventually were revealed to be: no, HELL NO, yes please, sadly yes, and oh my god this is going to be baaaad yes.

With all of those questions floating around our heros as they stood outside of the Whisky pee pee, the evil of Winnipeg snuck into the hearts of the young and vulnerable. The TRIUMVERATE of: Maximus Tatius, THE ONE WHO ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE, and I"M MORE THAN JUST FLASHDAAAAANCE! all stood on the wrong side of the velvet rope. Their animal party instincts said YES but their young stupid minds told them NO, BE RESPONSIBLE.

(Now let it be known that young J********* had a fair excuse: his plan had worked amazingly. He had gained that extra nights worth of non-Winnipeg strength by 'missing' his initial flight. Therefore he had been able to burst into then more-than-human ball-of-flame on what turned out to be the last game of Roy's season. Not even the existential crisis of facing off against his doppelganger was enough to hold him within our stratosphere. While every other player on the feild was crushed by the raw evil of the Peg, J******** somehow channeled its disgustingness throught a series of layout d's. And so it may have been fair for him to sit WHISKY DIX out, as he surely planned to destroy the entire planet of earth if we were allowed to play the next day.)

And so the three young ones left to cuddle in the hotel. MEANWHILE on the other side of the rope....

Jack Bauer lurked. He was taking on the terrorists that threatened our freedom to party. He somehow was able to get everyone, including the underaged THANKSGIVING TURKEY, into the club. After losing a boat race with another team in which Roy almost won even though we had two strangers drinking alongside of us, Bauer snapped. He decided to take party-matters into his own hands: he went rogue. He was not seen again until we were leaving the bar at which point he refused to leave because he was in too deep.

Dairy Queen meanwhile was taking the opposite approach. Rather than going all undercover mission impartypossible he instead reinvented how Roy will party forever. He revealed his strategy to us the next morning, at which point everybody who was within earshot's mind was completely melted into braingravy. Without further ado I give you:

The DQ GRENADE.

-take one group of ROY dancers (fig. A)
-add one group of ladies dancing nearby but scared of our raw ability to party( fig. B)

Now at this point A and B are cricles that cannot and will not overlap. That is until you insert fig. C, the friggin DQ hand grenade.

- Insert fig. C, the raw hunk of DQ powered by various alcohols, into fig. B thus creating an intense whirlwind of middle fingers, giggling girls one third DQ's age, and strange feelings of nausea and slight arousal.

These contradictory forces spewing from DQ's loins causes fig. B to scatter, thus causing the shrapnel of fig. B to hit various parts of fig. A, most specifically R****** "THE UGLIEST MAN ALIVE" S******. Despite his hideous appearance, his horrible hygiene, and the fact that his diarrhea left him unable to dance, he was still able to score digits from the grenade's primary target.

Somewhere downstairs F*** was able to score a pink boa scarf. It was a great night for ROY.

Or was it?

You see, there is, sadly, a side effect of the amazing DQ FIRE IN THE HOLE. In order to suicide bomb the party, Dairy Q sacrificed everything, thus leaving him vulnerable. His mind was such a wasteland that he was unable to judge that partying with a random group of people at 4 in the morning at our shady hotel with a bottle of vodka was probably a bad idea. You can understand now how truly hard it is to be THE BOMB.

Roy awoke the next morning to the learn of the final blow: there was no more potential for victory on the field. The TD and Satan danced to the tunes of 'WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS' as they prepared to devour ROY'S broken spirit.

Our heros sat alone and confused, (and slightly aroused... damn hand grenade!). Were they even a team anymore? They looked at these strange men they shared their beds and Surprisingly-high- in-iron-crunchy-triangle snacks with. Who are these people? Who am I?

DO I EVEN LIKE TO PARTY?

(Stay tuned for the third and final installment of how I spent my summer...)

Where Have I Been? (part 1)

2009-09-16T19:08:00.000-07:00

The Roys of Summer...

{42, 000 words
6/9 rough chapters almost done}

It's been too long, but then again it always has. One summer done, one chapter slowly churned out, and a lot of Ultimate Frisbee played.

I am trying to work my way back into the novel groove and my lack of employment certainly is helping. Still before I get too deep in all of that I want to post something here. It was a little big thing I wrote for my Ultimate team, ROY upon the completion of our 2009 campaign.

It was something I had seen done before and loved. A tournament recap. So I gave it a shot and have been told to publish it here. So without further ado, I gave you part 1 of 3, of my retelling of the 2009 Canadian Ultimate Championships in Winnipeg Manitoba as experienced by me and the White Tigers:

Come one, come all.

Sit down and get comfortable, for I am about to tell you all a tale of a grand and glorious adventure in what has to be the single most depressing place in the universe: Winnipeg.

A group of young men, brave stupid men, fought against this overwhellming blackness, and they survived... but at what price?

It begins with sunshine. Perfect weather had finally arrived to our fair city, after a summer of near endless rain and pain. So it was that only god, that robot in the sky, was laughing as those boys stepped aboard their planes to leave their sunny town, having no idea what was waiting for them.

They felt like the world was theirs for the taking, Winnipeg was just a city in a flatland with a funny name. "Winnipeg. Ha" they thought to themselves while sipping their inflight beverage. Meanwhile somewhere in Winnipeg another baby was eaten alive to fuel the Depressatron 3000, the only machine that can ensure suicidal urges to all those living within its emission radius. Our team of heros floated in their planes above the Deathtrapipeg... all except one.

The one who only GOD CAN JUDGE, J*****, laughed as he came home from the airport. He knew others would tease him about his 'booking mistake' but J***** had a plan. He felt the warmth of his home caress his soul as he thought about his unlucky teammates already slowly dying in the peg.

And he was right, but the boys didn't know it yet. Our heroes were still hopeful, they looked at the city through the goggles of naivety: Sure, Winnipeg airport was kind of small and stupid but whatever there was a rainbow and cool lightning outside!...Sure, our hotel was named after a cancer stick and the view from our windows was of sad sack of bricks but they had an unsupervised waterslide!... Sure, there was only ONE restaurant in the ENTIRE downtown core (not including the optical illusion that is robins/241pizza/suicide prevention hotline centre) , but it had total babes!

Ah the ignorance of youth.

The first day of Ultimate came and hope was still flying free. The weather was looking up, and we were about to throw down. What else could a young dude ask for?

And thus Roy entered the POOL OF 1000 DEATHS. More specifically it was three deaths, but it felt like an infinite number of torturous slayings. No need to go over the carnage here, all we need is the sound of one Coach's heart imploding into a Black Hole (TM) as our heros sat around and listened, all the while breathing in the Disgusting Haze that is 'nice' weather in the Shittypeg. Somewhere behind the trees the Tournament Director stroked his goatee and whispered under his breath: "OH GREAT DARK LORD the first stage is complete in your bidding. Winnipeg shall claim another batch of young fresh souls! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!". And with a wave of his pitchfork he ensured that all Shuttle Buses back to the hotels would be five hours late and packed with stank.

There was no solace from the Great Prarie Darkness for our heros.They tried to escape to their usual fortress of solitude, the unsupervised pool and waterslide, but even this could not restore them. It should have been the time of their lives: hot tub, waterslide, splash sword, iron-rich traingle corn chips, but instead all they could feel was the sting in their eyes. They thought that sting was the chlorine, but no, it was the sting of WINNIPEG eating their tears.

The seond day of games was somehow worse. Satan had given the boys an early first game knowing full well that instead of playing he would make them sleep in the mud of the tournament tent as God threw down lightning and rain trying to destroy the one mistake he had made: Winnipeg.

When they finally did play, our heroes did something no one expected. They battled against the darkness. They won a game. It stopped raining. Satan was confused and began to worry. He even saw some Roy players at the end of the day walking around and.... smiling?!?!? Clearly he had not done enough. He had to come up with some new way to turn them into hollow shells of men.

He posted the sign as they waited for their Shuttle Bus:

!!!!ALL GAMES CANCELLED!!!

"Try smiling now ROY! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. winnipeg"

Yet they did smile. At first they were sad. They were also mad, but they dealt with that shit and moved on. At this point it was just a matter of making it out that town alive. And so they drank, they ate, and they were merry. There was more to life then some silly tournament, and as long as they stuck together everything would be okay.

Or would it?

From the Evil Layer (aka the former home of the Winnipeg Jets) the tournament director and the Depressatron 3000 watched the team in their crystal ball. "THIS WILL NOT DO!!! ROY CANNOT BE HAPPPPPPPPPPYYYYYYYY!" and so began their new plan. Coach received an official tournament TXT MSG :

!!!!!games maybe not cancelled. maybe!!!!!!

This plan worked better then their best nightmare. Rather then partying robustly, as had been the plan, a group of young foolish royboys returned to the hotel after dinner. The tragedes, it seemed, would never end.

Not everyone was fooled though, Satan had not accounted for two things. Those two things were: D**** C. AND J****** B.

{Stay tuned for part 2, up soon}

where am I?

2009-06-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

{39,000ish words
5/9 rough chapters done}

Stuck in the middle with Portox

Right now, I am sitting at our harvest table, on my lil'netbook, thinking about what to write here. In the background are the barking/slashing noises of J. taking a well deserved 'wolf on a spaceship' video-game break.

And where am I in the old novel?

Right in the middle of chapter six, aka 'The Real Numbers'. This chapter is turning out as I expected: it should be the longest in the book. What I did not expect though is that it would be coming out this sloooooow. Its this slowness which is making me feel like I am really ready to be done with this novel already.

I want to be done because I know that I am nowhere near being done. With no end in sight it feels like this process could go on forever. And at this pace it just might. But at the same time, I am pretty sure that once I am really close to being done, or maybe having just finished, I will start to miss it all. Like the wonderful feeling that comes along with 'figuring out' a part of the story.

By 'figuring out' I just mean the moment where you have taken something that has been bothering you about the story for weeks and making it work. For example, a thing that took me months to figure out was comrade's voice. I cannot tell you how many times I thought I had finally started to capture the way she spoke and thought, only to come back the next day and see how far off I still was. I do not remember the exact moment I figured it out, but after months of her voice stalling my writing, I found a method for her speech that finally felt right. Her voice was finally weird enough to be interesting but sane enough to make sense, with a little effort. All was right in the world (of my book). It is this sort of 'figuring out' turns out to be the hard work of writing.

Just like anything difficult your first instinct is to avoid it. Do something else. I have been doing a lot of something else lately. Summer job, current job, working out, planning events, but not so much with the writing. While you are doing all of this something else though, the hard work stays with you, a nagging itch that only goes away by sitting down at these keys and pounding out a solution.

Which brings me back to wanting to be done with writing. Think of writing a novel as like the opposite of reading one. I am at the point in the book where, hopefully, my readers will be sucked in and will not want to put the book down. Me on the other hand as the writer, I have to make sure that my readers do feel sucked in by the story. In other words I have to make the story really good. That means putting it all together letter by letter, and then rearranging all of those letters over and over, until, finally, once again, all is at peace.

Where am I right now?

I am in the middle of the night. The day has been long and I just need a good sleep before I can start once more.

Wait, that metaphor was kind of lame. Let me try an analogy:

Where am I right now?

I am in the middle of the trail, with a friggin canoe over my head, circa last summer. At first it was fun: look at me! I can carry a canoe over! long distances! all by my lonesome! I even got a superhero nickname out of it: Portox. The body of a man, the head of a canoe.

The point is by the end of the day Portox and the gang got hungry, tired, and just wanted it to end. Portox wished he could see more then just the trail at his feet and the inside of a canoe. That and his body hurt. And his buddies were kind of mad at him for planning such a long day of canoe-carrying, and also he kind of misreading the map a few times, getting their hopes up. And the sun was low in the sky.

I am at the point where I have to remember the end. That when we finally hit that last portage, ready for it all to be over, we found the most amazing waterfall I have ever bathed in. It literally massaged the pain out of my back.

All was right in the world (this one) once more.

I am the first person, you are second, they are third and we are all (omni) present.

2009-04-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

{word count: 30,354

rough chapters done: 5/9}

"Who is the main narrator?"

This is a question I left behind last post, in part because it deserves its own space. This has been a tricky question to answer but the process of answering it has forced me to actually write this book as opposed to just thinking about it. As this blog can attest to though I have done a lot of thinking about this book. In fact I have done mountains worth of thinking to about a skipping stone's worth of writing.

This over-thinking, under-working might seem to go against the age-old wisdom that 'genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration'. I have come to learn though that that one percent better be some damned good inspiration. Otherwise you're left with 99% hard work (that is a LOT of smelly perspiration) for some half-bake inspiration that is either

i) an inspiration you don't fully believe in

ii) an inspiration that is not well thought-out leaving you unsure how to perspire to make it happen.

Either way not having a good 1% inspiration leaves you screwed.

How does this relate to my book's narrator? Well the choice and discovery of my narrator embodies the moment where I transitioned from inspiration to perspiration. In other words I had spent the better part of six years thinking about this book but in order to actually start writing it I really needed to work out the details of this narrator voice. Choosing and fleshing-out a narrator then was the first 0.001% of the 99%, because the only way to do this was to start racking up a word-count. In other words, the narrator could only come to exist through their narration (cue the sound of a tree falling in a forest). Whereas a tree has a physical existence apart from that sound, a fictional narrator has no bodily existence. Their only existence is made through language, through their words on the page.

I won't go too deep into the nit or the grit here but the only solid idea I had for the narrator was the it could not be comrade herself. To understand why put yourself in my position: you are writing a novel that has a pretty 'out there' premise that requires a lot of rhetorical work to seem somewhat realistic and on top of all of that you now have to tell your entire story through the in-no-way-normal voice of an organic robot who can live forever built far in the future but that has been alive for a few human generations. That's a bit tiring no?

Even worse put yourself in your own position: say you're reading this wacky book and the whole thing is written in the flat-out-strange descriptions of someone built to calculate infinity, someone who by nature has to ignore beginning and end. It's just not going to work.

And so I set about finding someone more relatable, more human, more me (but clearly not me. clearly.). Keep in mind that I have never done this before and so I wanted a narrator who I felt comfortable writing through, who I felt an affinity with.

Well it just so happened to be comrade's boss. As always I do not want to publish any spoilers but comrade ends up (near the start of the book) working in a Museum exhibit about the history of calculation, the same Museum where she finds/starts smoking. The curator of her exhibit is in many ways like me. We both want to use comrade to create a public display, we both can never really understand comrade since we are both mortal humans, and we both love caramel.

Just kidding about that last one. I hate caramel.

In conclusion I am not the narrator of the book... or am I? Well, no, actually I am not, but that has not stopped a strange thing from happening. As a student of literature I am very used to the phenomenon of starting to think in the language of a book or an author. For example read enough Willy Shakespeare and you eventually will start thinking in iambic pentameter. It really just the effect of immersion.

Well the reverse has been happening with me, just a little bit. In the process of writing this novel in the narrator's voice I have had to adapt my narrator's writing style. Well one specific aspect of this style, an aspect I definitely do not use in my writing, has been creeping up in my words more and more when I am NOT writing the book. I will be reading over an email before I hit send and then I notice something sounds funny and then I spot it: I am still writing like the narrator.

Even now that I'm looking out for it, I am still echoing my narrator's style. Even in this post...

the medium is the messy

2009-03-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

{new feature!

word count: 23, 002

rough chapters done: 4/9}

This post has been baking in the mind-oven for awhile now...

DING!

It's done.

By 'it' I mean the pair of chapters I have been working on since January. Not only are these chapters done to the point where I don't feel the overwhelming urge to read them again and again off the screen making many minor changes, but they have also done me the favour of teaching me the process by which I will write the rest of the book.

It all started with a dead machine. As I mentioned earlier these chapters got off the an amazing start because my computer said goodbye awhile. That forced me to write by hand in here:

umm... Megs, comrade calculator is a calculator woman.

This was an super-wonderful early Christmas gift from this amazing lady, which also came with a beautiful calculator (to be featured later). This note book, to my surprise, is now nearly full. Once it is full I will move on to the notebook given to me by this lovely lady. What can I say, ladies like to give me notebooks?

The point here is that writing in a notebook changes everything compared to writing on the lappy. Its like the difference between walking and driving. Walking is slower and more contemplative. Driving is faster but makes you a lot more moody. So now whenever I need to start slowly, drafting out ideas for the next chapter, I walk over to the old pen and paper notebook. And I think. HARD.

After I've scribbled in page after page of weird diagrams and totally illegible handwriting, only then will I start punching it in to my little netbook. In the same way that cars make me more likely to curse at someone, the computer makes me more likely to rip apart my words. So by having the bare bones of a hand-written story that I type-in, I can also edit, re-shape, and add some meat.

This brings me to why these last two chapters have gone become an odd couple. First of all they both burst out of me into the notebook at pretty much the exact same time. Second of all they have become interchangeable. As in I switched on for the other. All because of the notebook.

You see for these bursts of creativity I need to get my mind in a very active state. So a few weekends ago I was sitting on a park bench somewhere in Hamilton with my notebook and this book trying to write to stay warm (which does not work btw). Then it hit me like a bag of metaphors: one of my diagrams pointed out to me that the 3rd and 4th chapters needed to be switched. I was reluctant at first, but I tried it anyway. and then boom. A week later the third and fourth chapter had done the old switcheroo and were done.

Why did they need to be switched?

Well I don't want to give away too much but I have a non-traditional chapter numbering system. For example, the fourth chapter number(s) feature negative numbers, which is a change from the rest of the chapters that focus on positive numbers. This is what forced the chapter switch. I realized that the negative chapter had to be the one that was written from comrade's perspective, because she is not the narrator of the novel. In fact you might go so far to say that she is the opposite (-,+) of the narrator!

But that's not quite true.

Through this switch I was able to keep all the positive chapters from the perspective of the main narrator. It cleans things up quite a bit.

Who is that main narrator?

We'll have to save that on for next time...

a stolen gift from my brother

2009-03-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

Read a great article in the latest newyorker about the life, writing, and struggles of David Foster Wallace.

The writing of DFW is what really got me going in those early days. It was my way in when I had no idea how to start, when I was lost in that wilderness of the unknown (a wilderness I find myself returning to these days, but at least now I know my way out).

I decided early on that a proper author does research. I started looking up smoking information but it didn't feel right. It felt like that path of medical research would lead me to write scientifically, and even then I knew that wasn't where this book was headed.

Instead I wanted to research ideas I had stuck with me from my undergraduate studies. My main character in the novel is comrade calculator a robot built from human parts who was made to calculate infinity. I was fascinated in my Chaos class and Number theory class when we talked about infinity, and I needed more. So I set about reading a wide variety of math non-fiction on this abstract topic.

This is where I ran into problems. I couldn't finish any of these books. In one case I couldn't finish the first chapter. The problem was that the books were either written by Philosophers or Mathematicians. The books by Philosophers were thick with Importance, constantly drawing out Deep Meaning from the math by using as many big words as possible. The books by Mathematicians fared better (especially if they were Math Historians) but even then they became tedious and confusing in the same way that a really smart Math Teacher will eventually lose you because you are simply not smart enough to understand what they are saying. The writing gets lost in its own explanations, leaving you behind, while they carry on a conversation with themselves all in Math-speak.

Long after I had given up on spending money on these books that I never finished I found DFW's Everything and More sitting on my brother's bookshelf. He had yet to read it. My brother has a knack for picking out good non-fiction and so I asked if I could borrow the book. Almost a year later it still sits on my bookshelf.

What makes the book so much better then the others is that DFW writes as a regular person. Sure he is regular person that knows unending amounts of information about Math, History, and Philosophy but he uses that knowledge in a way that includes you, taking you under his wing. The book start exploring the idea of a person, anyone, trying to get out of bed but being weighed down by infinity.

Throughout the whole book he maintains a sense of humor that is sorely needed when you dive this far into abstract math. It is a vulnerable humor, revealing the challenge he faced of having to simplifying the math for his reader (and editors) without losing the mathematical essence. Even when he doesn't hit this balance you know he is trying, really really hard, which makes you want to try harder to understand.

This is what makes his writing so good: that he never reaches for the Deep Meaning of infinity that explains the universe, and he also doesn't get lost in himself and Mathematical ideas, instead he know that everything important lies in that moment where YOU get it, where you understand the essence, the moment where you solve the problem. He helps as much as he can to help you get to this moment but it is up to you, and when you make it all come together, it is a rewarding experience unlike any other.

This is how it began, spending days while Jen was in class, sitting in the Hamilton General Hospital's cafeteria with my laptop and DFW. Reading and stopping to write down any ideas that came to me, then reading again. It allowed me to turn on my mind and my imagination.

As I was nearing the end of the book, I realized I really liked the guy. You could tell he just loved the math and wanted to show you why he loved it so much. He was the sort of dude you wouldn't mind having a drink with just so you could hear him rant on for hours. And so I looked him up on google. I wanted to know what else he had written.

It was September 13th 2008. The first page that came up on the search was a newspaper article reporting David Foster Wallace's suicide which had taken place the day before, Sept. 12th, 2008.

I still don't know how to react.

my apologies to science

2009-03-01T15:46:00.000-08:00

Had my monthly meeting with my illustrator, one Ryan Dodgeson. He made pancakes, extra thick, I brought fresh croissants, and we downed it all with coffee. Somewhere between bites we talked a bit about the book we are working on.

The meetings were supposed to be a motivating factor. Once a month we pick a day to meet and I have to have a chapter ready to show and discuss. So far we have had two meetings and I have been prepared for both. More importantly they have been fruitful meetings of minds, with Ryan taking my visual ideas and making them better, and our banter (and the coffee) fueling new ideas.

These talks end up, for better or worse, me getting all worked up about Math, giving Ryan a mini-lecture about the number-theory that I love so much. Within one of these rants we decided that the book will feature the following inscription on the back-cover,

File Under: Math Fiction

The idea being that, while yes the book is set hundreds of years in the future, the tag of 'science fiction' would be misleading. Sure, sci-fi is the easiest way to explain the genre of the book;I can't count the number of times I used that term this weekend to explain it quickly. At the same time though, Math (infinity and everything to do with it) is what guides the whole book, whereas Science (organic robots that can live forever) is something I can use to make the Math into a story.

A question I got a lot this weekend is if I have the whole story for book planned out in my mind. The short answer is no, but I have been thinking about the details of the beginning of the story for the past 6 years or so. I confident that if I create a real enough backstory/world and characters within it, then I can let the math guide a story around them.

Despite having no ending plotted, and being just past a third of the way through the writing the book, I already have my in-no-way-secret dream about where I hope the book will one day be published. Right here:

Jen and I just got back from our honeymoon in San Francisco and one of our stops was here, 826 Valencia, aka mcsweeneys. Clearly I went into their retail store with high expectations, which were exceeded in every way possible. Besides publishing a great quarterly, wonderful books (i.e. What is the What by Dave Eggers) , and a great magazine, they use this space for two other functions: one is their not-for-profit youth writing center which itself produces tonnes of writing. Browsing through one such youth-penned guide to SF we found out where to find one of the best meals I have ever eaten:

It tasted even better than it looks. I can feel my gut longing for it now.

The other function of the storefront at 826 Valencia? Just another pirate supply shop, complete with buried treasure that younguns can barter for, walls of mysterious drawers, and removable floor boards where you can leave secret messages. They even had a drawer full of rotting lemons, to hold off the scurvy. My only advice to you if you ever go: be sure to read ALL of the 'mop' wall.

How big of a jump is it from pirates to androids? In my dreams, not such a big one...

short but sick

2009-02-12T17:58:00.000-08:00

This will have to be quick because I am supposed to be resting. My body is making it very clear to me that even sitting up to type is kind of pushing it right now.

But this isn't meant to be a pity post. No no, its exactly about how the Internet can deceive you, or more accurately, allow you to deceive yourself.

Take my sickness for instance. I called sick into work today for the first time at my job, and they guilt-tripped me a little bit but eventually gave in. As a result I spent a chunk of today debating whether I really needed this time off. Jen reminded me that I needed to rest but I continued the debate in my mind as I surfed the Internet.

The point is that I continued to surf for hours. All the while I kept feeling worse, but not enough to make me feel like I deserved the night off.

It wasn't until I literally had nothing left to surf, when I actually lied down. It wasn't until I fell asleep during the time that I normally would be working that I actually got some rest. It wasn't until I woke up from rich dreams with the cat on my chest did I feel that, YES, this is exactly what I needed, this is exactly why I didn't go to work.

Lately I've been discovering more and more that the Internet can really keep you from doing those little important things. How?

By allowing you to do nothing endlessly. Since its all just time-wasting you can tell yourself that checking Facebook AGAIN really is resting, as I did today. You can tell yourself that reading news stories endlessly really is work, which is exactly how I wasted my days between Sept.-Jan.

It was until my laptop broke that I started reading literature again. It wasn't until I was off the 'net that I started filling up notebooks with ideas, with solid rough-draft writing.

My month-long Internet vacation was the best thing to ever happen to this book. In those five months in the fall I maybe wrote half of a very rough chapter that I was never happy with. In this past month, featuring those three internetless weeks, I have hammered out two long, good, chapters.

Clearly I have the Internet again now and today shows I am not over my addiction yet. But after I finish this chapter in the next week I think I will go back to some internet-free days to try to engage my creativity again.

Of course if I fail you'll be the first to know. For now I have turn off this damned box, lie down, and get back to reading Midnight's Children.

I blame you

2009-02-08T10:44:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you ever told me that I am wasting my time?

When have you ever reminded me of my teeny-tiny odds of success with this book?

When have you ever made me doubt myself?

The answer to these questions is a resounding 'never', which most of me is thankful for.

The other part of me remembers a conversation I had last year:

it was my final placement of Teacher's College. It was the first time I was working with a teacher that I chose. She was a teacher I respected, the sort of teacher that students will remember years from now, the sort of teacher who pushes all her students to be better.

One day I mentioned in conversation with her that I plan on starting my career by teaching part-time while using the rest of my time to write my novel.

So she began to question me : what is the book is about (I'll post about that soon enough)? Will I be fine with the reality of part-time teaching (less money with just as much work/time)? Will Jen and I be able to survive with a limited income?

I answered as best as I could, and I think she got the sense I was serious about my plan. Then she asked me something that is still on my mind today, nearly a year after:

Do you have anyone who doubts you?

I answered no, that everyone in my life was pretty supportive. She shook her head. She said that maybe it's just her, but that she hasn't reached any major life goals without the motivation of being able to prove someone wrong. She told me that her best friends knew this, and that they would purposley doubt her as hard as they could just to keep her working hard, and that she appreciated that.

These days I tutor nights and write during the days, and I am making steady progress on my novel. But I still have no doubters. Sure my parents put a little pressure on me to find full-time work, but they also seem genuinley excited when I say my writing is going well.

Do I wish I had more haters in my life?

Maybe. My dad occaisonally is a doubter, and I am starting to appreciate it. For instance, he seems to doubt that I'll stick with this new 'novel' blog.

Now everytime I hit Publish Post on this blog I'll get a little satisfaction, a little voice in my head saying 'take THAT dad!'.

Is this a good thing, or do I have Freudian daddy issues? Or a little bit of both?

You decide, and please, hit me with some hate in the comments.

Two Goals

2009-02-06T10:57:00.000-08:00

Long time no see.

I am back to try this blogging thig for the hundreth time. This time, I think I hope, might be different.

My last few attempts at blogging were poetry and memories. Both of them fell victim to my habit of thinking too much. As in, I thought long and hard about 'the concept' of those blogs. I loved the concepts.

I found though that when it came to actually posting new entries, my enthusiasm quickly faded to silence.

This blog is different, but only slightly. I have thought about this concept for a long time, yes, but the idea actually came from my dad via email:

"maybe you should write about you current small town life experience ups and downs etc."

That got me thinking, suprise suprise, and I ended up with this: a blog about trying to write my first novel.

The difference between this and all of my other blog-concepts is that I work on my novel everyday. It is my main occupation.

That does two things, it satisfies my need for arty fartsy self expression, and it gives me plenty of material to blog about.

So here we go.

I'll end off this inital posts with what I have been telling people lately when they ask about the novel, or my new years resolutions. I say

I have two goals this year:

1. To get married

2. To finish my novel

one down, one to go...

sunday aug 24th- 08

2008-09-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

{side note: this is back when I was still trying to record a memory per day here. }

quick one: had a coffee too late on a tired drive home. took my thyroid pill right before going to bed. bad combination. up for hours with weird thought/ideas/ poetry running through my head. small sample of this kindofinsane poetry that was keeping me up:

i'll pull ideas from your eye,
i'll pull an idea from your eye,
are realities a compromise?
our reality is compromised.

saturday the 23rd of august, 08

2008-09-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

jy. on the beach on toronto island, facing away from the city. she had just bought a nail painting, patterning tool kit that week, and she brought it with her. after eating we sat down on the hot sand and she experimented on all of us. my pinky ends up green with a black- grid overlay. mo.'s toes on his right foot end up multi-coloured, like a bag of skittles, some with leopard print.

all the while red ants bite us, leaving a sting that only comes off in the cold, numb, water. later that night, after taking a shower at ryjy's to clean off the sun and sand, I put my underwear back on only to discover, through a bite to the thigh, that an ant had made the trip home with me. ryjy wondered why I was swearing so much in their bathroom.

days later, at different times, we all got headaches and chest pain from the bites.

aug 22nd, 2008

2008-09-05T07:09:00.000-07:00

outside a small pizzeria in little italy, in T.O. d. and r. sitting on the curb, me standing, all of us eating our pepperoni slices, still hot and in the greasy paper bag. band practice was supposed to start 45 minutes ago, but one member was late, and instead of waiting we went to get food. this is how our monthly practices go. everyone a reason to eat and drink, and maybe play a few songs. this is both an upside and a down.

while we were waiting for our pizza orders to come up we had a discussion about finding money in food. as in: if you were to find money in your pizza slice, completely by surprise, how much money would it have to be as for you to not be upset about it. R. and I agreed that if we found a twenty in food we bought, the good would outweigh the gross. d. said he'd be fine with finding ten, and after thinking about it, I agreed.

august 21st- 2008

2008-09-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

skipping stones across lake ontario. Throwing them away from St. Catharines, our new home, towards toronto, our old one. the water wasn't warm but we swam.

we looked across the lake at that small city sky line on the horizon. Toronto. that's what caught me off guard, that it was in the middle of the horizon. Toronto isn't just around the bend of the shoreline. no, it sits right smack in the middle of the horizon, a small shape. It sits across the width a Great Lake.

every rule does not have an exception

2008-02-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

three links before I settle in for a day's worth of hard work.

#1: just like that math poster, I would love to hang this in my future classroom:

not only because every single rule is valid and thought provoking but because I love the look of crazy-messy type-setting.

#2:one more for my dream classroom.

This amazing map that shows nature and human culture as inseparable things, which is exactly what my thesis is about

#3 last but not least for my #1 fan, hi dad!, here is a link to a page about homemade tractors in Poland

enjoy the snow

warning: this post may feature explicit, and illicit mathematics

2008-01-18T08:09:00.000-08:00

If I ever do become a high school math teacher I have to find a way to turn this page into a giant poster to hang in my room.

Oh and by the way Jen: I (x2+9/4y2+z2-1)3 - x2z3-9/80y2z3=0 you.

Sharon: I look forward to sitting on your x2+y3+z5 = 0 for the super-bowl party.

Megs: I am forever jealous of your city's cheap x2y2 = (z2-1)3

okay, enough. thank you for math humoring me.

the littlest battle

2008-01-10T04:37:00.000-08:00

I have a hearts problem. Other people, who will remain nameless, kill computer-time by trying to find the winning hand in Solitaire. Whenever I have a moment or two spare I've been trying to play what I call the 'moon-shoot grand-slam perfect game' in Hearts. This became my oh-so-lofty goal once I had reached my earlier self-imposed challenge of winning with a perfect '0' score. Of course all of these goals came about, much like this post, to distract me from what I should be doing on the computer: my schoolwork. Unlike the Hearts games I would play literally every lunch for a year in highschool against my good friends, I now play against the computer. I can win almost at will, since the computer is far more predictable than highschool friends, thus the challenges I make for myself. Playing Hearts then, for me, is more than just procrastination. Playing Hearts, for me, is more than just nostalgia for the days when my friends would always look at me with a suspicious eye knowing my love for the reckless failure of trying to shoot the moon. Playing Hearts for me is more than just having an easy victory over the computer rather than facing up to the war of my thesis. But playing Hearts, for me, alone at the computer trying to reach a self-pleasing goal, seems much less than all of those things combined.

Time to get to work.

Salmon-Sense: Tingling

2008-01-07T05:30:00.000-08:00

It's felt like ages since I didn't do nothing. I've had the sense of sleepwalking through life- but that changed at about 6:56 this morning with a bite of smoked salmon. Forget coffee, that shit wakes you up; makes you remember you're alive. And so: getting off the bus today, breathing the morning air. Drinking Joy tea from my love in my traveler's mug. Humming songs as I walked up to the school. This is a good feeling. It's been too long since I sang songs. The bell just rang, and kids are outside my door.

{"life, love, and tears"}

2007-10-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

*those are the three requirements my father expects of anything he is reading. I don't expect the same, especially in a short short story. When I'm writing I usually am aiming to catch a thought or a mood I am in. This, according to my father over drinks after thanksgiving dinner, does not make for very good reading, which I can understand. It comes off, he says, as too sophisticated. My stories don't go anywhere. Well today I will try to deliver at least on a little plot, though I don't think I'll be able to deliver on my dad's big three. Still it is thanksgiving and I am thankful for my father's constructive criticism, so here ya go pop. and mom. and everyone.

I made a mp3 mix to go along with this short story. Its called accident (to download click. then click request download link. then click download file in the top right hand corner of the screen) I'll put the tracklist below. enjoy.*

"Hey Lady What The Hell Did You Think You We're Doing Back Their You Nearly Killed Me And Now My Car is Destr- oh shit are you okay?"

I hear these words, one at a time, each one floating around me. The words register in my mind: 'hey', 'buddy', 'what', and so on... but once I hear him say 'okay?' I can't put the words together again. I hold onto each word, and when I put them together I start losing my grip on them, and so they fall into a random order. They make no sense. no sense they make. make they sense no. sense no make they.

"Oh shitshitSHIT- lady, can you hear me?"

Of course I can hear you. Wait. Yes! I understand him. But I still can't speak. I can't speak still. I can't- focus. I need to focus. My head feels like it has needles in it. Focus. Okay. Where am I?

I feel his index and middle fingers touch my neck.

"are you checking my pulse?", I am amazed these word come out of my mouth. I didn't know I could do that again.

Neither did he: through my blurry vision I can see his hand pulling quickly away from my neck, out of my broken car window. As if he had just touched a hot stove.

"fuck", I rub my eyes trying to see what he is swearing about. His arm is bleeding. He must of cut it on my window's broken glass when he pulled it out.

"why the hell didn't you tell me you could hear me? jesus!"
"I didn't know I could tell you." I want to get out to help him with his arm turning all red , but my door is jammed shut. I look past him and see cars, in every direction. I touch my forehead trying to ease the worst headache of my life.

"so what the hell were you doing just sitting in middle of the intersection like that lady?"
Its true. Our cars make a capital T right in the heart of the intersection. From the looks of it, its still be rush-hour because all four streets leading towards us are packed. The police or ambulance won't be able to make it in anytime soon.

My head feels like its opening up. "I was drawing"
"What?" his eyes turn away from his arm and glare at me.
"The last thing I remember is drawing on a small note pad on my dashboard"
"are you FUCKING insane?"
"I always do that when I'm stuck in this traffic. I drive through this slowdown every day. sometimes I'm stuck behind a car twenty minutes before moving an inch. I remember having a really good idea and it didn't look like the car in front of me was moving anytime soon"
"well you were drawing right in the middle of the intersection"
"Yeah. I can see that now."
He turns away from me running his available hand through his hair and muttering something I can't hear. I look at all the cars and wonder why no one is coming to my rescue. Where is my brave citizen in shining armour? Or at least someone with a tylenol. I swear the first person who can open this damn door and walk me away from this goddamn smell, I'll give them my firstbor-

that smell. What is it? It surrounds me but I can't place it. It seems odd but familiar. I remember it. I remember... it reminds me of childhood. Sitting in the backseat and rolling down my window a crack to smell it. Helping my dad to wash the windshields, I'd smell it while he pumped: Gas. I must be sitting in pool of gasoline. no wonder no one will come near me. My headache has started to move down to the base of my head, the top of my neck.

"so you can't get out of their eh?" He's come back, calmed down.
"doesn't seem like I can no."
"Well I'd try to help you but you sort of put my arm out of commission"
He says this with a small, hidden smile. Is he flirting with me? Two seconds ago he was ready to break my neck. Men never have a good sense of timing.
"yeah. sorry about that." I say dryly with a fake smile.
"so. what idea was so important you had to nearly kill us both for?"
"I have no goddamn clue because you smashed into me right when I was trying to get it down on paper. and by the way: how did you miss a car sitting right in the middle of an intersection?"
He ignores my question, still with his hidden grin: "wait. you said you we're drawing, not writing down an idea."
"I was trying to draw out the idea, that's what I always do. drawing is faster and even then I only draw-out an idea in traffic if its a really, really good idea. I don't think there is much chance of finding my drawing pad now."
He turns and gives a large not-hidden smile: "yeah. sorry about that."

His arm hasn't stopped bleeding even though he's tied his dress shirt around it. I see the blood slowly walking down his fingers. We both look out at the wall of cars, and I can hear sirens off in the distance. I try to remember my idea through the pain echoing in my head. I know I was listening to my mp3 player. I was listening, like I do everyday, to someone reading a book. Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature.

"Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature."
"What the hell are you talking about now lady?"
"Its a line that I remember. I was listening to a book when you hit me.", I look at him and see him holding his bloody arm high in the air, as if he is waving at me even though we are a meter apart,"Why are you holding your arm over your head for?"
He smiles again with a little laugh. and again he ignores my question: "People actually listen to books on tape?"
"Like I said, its a slow drive home. I like to get through my reading for school so that I can relax once i get home. So tell me why are you holding your arm over your head?"
"Well that lines you repeated sounds like something philosophical to me, like plato, or-"
"You're arm."
His smile shrinks: "Its fine."
I can't speak.
"why are you staring at me like that? Okay. Fine: I'm holding it up here to slow the bleeding a bit. RED. Rest. Elevate. Direct pressure"
I can only whisper: "red"
"yeah. red. what's wrong with you-" a drop of blood falls on his cheek. He looks up and sees that his arm is covered in thick red blood. Its a sea of shiny red glistening in the sunlight, moving down his shoulder. "fuckfuckmcmotherfuck" he quickly takes off his undershirt. "reach out through the window. now. help me." He looks scared.

I put my hand out and hold onto the loose end of the shirt while he ties it right underneath the wound or where the wound should be submerged under the waves of blood. All the while he is muttering under his breath like a car engine trying to start.

"I'm such an idiot. I barley even tied that last shirt. I tied it on the wound as if it was a fucking band aid. fucking mother shitfuck. You've gotta tie it tight like this to cut off the circulation. Fuck, where in the fuck these asshole medics. ughh. I've gotta sit down."

I could feel his head as he sat against my jammed door. Only his raised bloody arm above is still in my vision.
"Are you gonna be okay... umm..." I don't know his name.
"Alex. My name is Alex. Yeah I'll be okay. Though I just realized right now that I sat down in gasoline"
"Yeah I should've warned you about that."
I hear his small laugh again. "Thats okay. Hey. Can you hear that chopper?"
"Yeah I think so", its barley louder than his laugh, " but I can't see it"
"Well it has got to be freakin' close by now. Yeah. It has to be close."
I sat their staring at his arm. The one finger that was not covered in blood was starting to go pale.
"So I don't want to have to nearly died without hearing what your great idea was."
"I told you that I can't remember"
"Well.. ahh... what's you're name?"
"Amy"
"Well Amy I'm certainly not going anywhere until that helicopter swoops down from the heavens, so why not think up a new idea for me. start with that Plato or whatever shit you were talking about. It's just you and me here now-"
"the unities, that's what the book was talking about!"
"whose unities?"
" Writers'. The book on tape was talking about it when I got stuck behind that car. The unities are a classic ideal writers' used to aspire to: that a story should only be set in one scene, with only one plot, in real time. or something like that."
"that was your idea? how did you draw that?"
"I didn't that was the point."
"Maybe its the fact I've lost a pint of blood but I don't exactly understand"
"I'm still putting this back together myself. Ummm. Okay. Focus. These unities are good for writers because it makes them concentrate on one thing, one place, one time. These rules give order to stories."
Sunlight is shining through the pieces of red broken glass on the bottom of my window.
"I think you're going to have to write me out this story when we're done today. Or will you draw it?"
People are standing outside of their cars now looking at the sky, and waving to us: the ones swimming in the gasoline. and Alex waves back with his sea of red.
"No I won't draw it... because of my idea. My idea-" I pause thinking of how to say it.
"out with it Amy, just keep talking", his voice has gone softer, as if he was yawning.
"well I was just thinking that if writers needs these three unities because their writing is so easily distracted then the opposite should apply to drawers because drawing is naturally limited."
"what in fucks central are you talking about?"
His blood is moving down my side of the door towards me.
" Think about an apple", the word red is repeats in my mind, it moves closer, "someone drawing an apple has no choice but to draw it how it looks", red, red, red, "but someone writing about it can describe its outsides, its insides, its history, its symbolism", red, red, "Writers need the unities to control them, keep them in check. But drawers need to be liberated from the unities. So I decided to try to draw that." The blood touches my leg.
"draw what?" I can barley hear him ask because the sound of the helicopter's blades is cutting through the air.
"To draw an un-unified time, place, and action. so everything all at once"
His blood blows off of his arm past my face.
"what did it look like?" Voices of paramedics come rushing towards us.
"Nothing. I don't know. I can't remember. That's when we hit."
They begin to lift him up. He looks at me from the stretcher. They are checking his pulse: "it was an accident".
Firemen are breaking the red glass from my window. They pull me out and now Alex and I lye side by side on stretchers watching the blue sky. "Hey Alex. What do you think my drawing looked like?"
I turn my head to look at him. He is already being lifted into the helicopter. As he rises up I try to see his face, looking to see if I can find a smile.

* accident (to download click. then click request download link. then click download file in the top right hand corner of the screen) track list:
1.freebie- im talkin to you and the phone's still on the hook feat. speak her
2. mf doom- great day(fourtetmix)
3. silver mt.zion- 13angles
4.lambchop- paperback bible*

{and I'll post if I want to}

2007-09-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

* a birthday treat for you all. A story of mine that was rejected for the MACHINE OF DEATH anthology. The premise behind this anthology is that all the stories are in a future where there is a machine that, after analyzing a blood sample, tells you how you are going to die. The story I submitted was called Stillborn (all stories had to be titled after the death that was predicted). I've since edited it, trying to get rid of the sappy stuff that I think held it back from being accepted. I think it works a bit better know, and I hope you enjoy my faliure! *|
“After your death you will be what you were before your birth.”- Arthur Schopenhauer

I feel my mom place her cool hands on my hot forehead, and I am pulled out of the dark forest. I had been running around thick tree trunks, surrounded by the dark. As I ran my stomach hurt, over and over. I was sure I was being hit again and again by someone I couldn't see. An invisible football player, becuase I was holding a footbal. So I ran as fast, ut the forest went on forever. No matter where I went it was the same treetunks, the same darkness, and the same player hitting me. The last hit pulled me to the dirty ground. I closed my eyes. That is when I felt mom's cool hands.
I can hear the rain on the window, and opening my eyes, see that light is starting turning the sky a dark blue. I smell of mint tea. That feeling is my nose already making me feel better after that horrible dream I had had so many times. I notice that mom has been talking to me quitely:
"You know why I tell you this story all the time, right
I looked up at her, and close my eyes and say: "because its our super secret, and so we can only share it with each other." Like always she puts out her pinky finger, I gab onto it with my hand and shake it until she pretends like I'm hurting her because I'm so strong. I decide to shake as hard as I can. Her eyes widen, and then glare at me. I let go because I'm sure I am hurting her, ripping off her finger, and now I am in big trouble. She smiles and I know she has tricked me again.
Even though I had made this promise over and over, the truth was that I had never heard our story all the way to the end. You see, my mother only told me this story whenever I was having trouble falling asleep. I would always close my eyes and listen to the quiet sounds of her voice. I guess she is telling me our story to help me fall back asleep, which I always had, but today is different. Her cold hands hold mine tight and her words sound strong.
"When the doctor told us it nearly broke me. I swear honey, it almost did. Here I was sitting there, knowing you were somewhere in my belly, when that damn nurse walks in and I could tell from her face that I was going to lose you. She gave me the results of your blood test, and right there on the top in big black letters is the reminder that the machine is never wrong, and I swear I could feel my heart breaking.
But this is where your story really starts babe. You see every mother-to-be's worst nightmare is going in for the blood test and then reading that their baby is going to die because of 'terminated pregnancy'. It doesn't matter if the baby was sick, or if the mom was sick, or if the baby wasn't going to make it through labor, or even if the mom was going to fall down the stairs and bash her belly, the test always showed 'terminated pregnancy'. That's because the test tells how the baby is going to die, and so if the baby is not going to make it for whatever reason, the machine will always just say 'terminated pregnancy' because it knows the parents will choose for the baby to die quickly in peace rather than letting it suffer, and having to suffer along with it. And the machine never lies. I've heard many stories babe, about parents trying to ignore the test, and trying to have the baby anyways. The end is always the same: the mother is in too much pain and the baby is in even worse shape, and so they give in to the future they knew would happen all along, and have to terminate. and once again the machine is right"
I sit up in bed with my tea, my stomach still hurting. This is the first time I have stayed awake this far into our story. How I could have ever fallen asleep so many nights to these gruesome details! Any time I ever heard other kids talk about the machine it always scared me to the bone. Maybe thats why I'd usually tune out the story, focusing instead on the soft waves of my mothers voice.
"But you were different, babes: right their on top of that sheet, instead of saying 'terminated pregnancy' it said that you be 'stillborn'. They told me that they ran the test three times (and they never did that), every time it told them the same thing: 'stillborn', which they said no one had ever seen before. And so even though I was sad and worried, I already knew you were special. Your dad didn't see it that way though. He was convinced, especially after talking to that damn doctor, that they should induce our labor as soon as possible, because the machine was never wrong. They wanted to kill you right then and there. I obviously differed in my opinion. Your daddy and I tried to talk it out, but he just couldn't stick around knowing what was going to happen to you. So from that day on it was just you and me."
I hold the empty mug in my hands because it was still warm. We watch droplets rolling down the glass, connecting with other droplets, and rolling down.
"Its funny, at the beginning I was so worried about what was going to happen to you. Every night, all I could think about was all the ways that it could happen. Over and over I thought about losing you, and I couldn't sleep, I felt like I was losing my mind. So I started reading to try and take my mind off the worry, and it worked sometimes. But then there were those other nights where I would go through whole books and then get up for breakfast still feel that worry pushing down on me. It was on one of those long nights that I came up with a little reading game to help me get through. You see babes I was reading a book of short stories, and I found that after every story I'd close my eyes and imagine that the story had been about us. I kept doing that over and over, until it got to the point where I wouldn't even wait 'til I was done the story, instead I'd change the characters to me and you as I was reading. And so if it was a story about a man who would talk to trees in his forest, I'd imagine that it was me sitting underneath your branches, talking to you. I did this for the whole book of short stories, and after every story you seemed a little more real, like we'd been together."
My mother thinks I am a tree? I would have to be a small tree I guess, but trees are big. I picture myself as a tree but all I can see was myself in a tree costume, with a hole cut out for my face. I liked how it looks. Maybe this was what she was thinking about. Maybe she is talking about Halloween.
"So I was playing that reading game with you one night because I couldn't fall asleep. I read this story about a prisoner who was sentenced to be shot in the morning. He was upset because he was only halfway finished writing a play, a play he felt it was his destiny to finish. So in the middle of the night he prays to God asking only for enough time to finish his play. So the next morning, as he's standing before the firing squad, waiting for the bullet, he realizes he can't move and thinks he's dead. He sees that the firing squad is frozen too. He can feel a drop of sweat sitting perfectly still on his forehead. Everyone is frozen, but his thoughts aren't. He's still able to think. So in his mind he finishes his play, down to the very last word."
What happened to the man after he finished thinking about his play? I don't wanna ask her now though. I am happy with her cold hands around mine, and her warm voice.
"So I couldn't help it, I put down the book, closed my eyes, and I prayed. Or I at least tried to pray. I had never, ever, prayed before. I didn't even know what to do with my hands. So I just put them out in front of me, open to the sky, and I tried to pray. But nothing came, I didn't know what to ask for. I knew, I knew beyond a doubt that the machine was never ever wrong. I hoped with all of my heart that it was, but I knew that it was always right. No amount of praying would change that. And so all that I asked from God then, was to give us our own story together, like the ones I'd always read to you. A story safe in our thoughts, so that you could know me and I could know you."
My mother's voice is a wave washing over me. I am underwater and I can't breathe. The bottom of the ocean is pitch black. I open my eyes and I am in the dark forest again. I am cold, colder than every before but sweating again. I am being hit by the invisible football player, but this time he has brought his teammates. I try to run, but I can't move. My arms and legs are frozen and I am stuck floating in the dark. I looked down at my hands and feet: they had no toes or fingers, they were just balls of flesh. It felt like the invisible team was inside of me, trying to rip their way out.
I can still feel my mother's cool hands. The pain pulls and pushs my chest, but the more I focus on her cold smooth hands, the more I can remember the warm pull of her voice. The more I can remember our story. I focused on it, and her hands holding mine. I think: I've heard the end of the story, so now I can let go.

{create change}

2007-09-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

|* A quick post because the ideas i have for my next story haven't found the right time to break though here. Instead I will do a throwback post; I used to have a dream of website consisting solely of art that my friends made. Sadly it never became what I had dreamed, because it required a full-time commitment to really flurish, with no benefit besides lovely art. Anyways here is one piece, a small strip by my friend ryan. It details a night we did not sleep. this night was followed by one of the best sleeps of my life, ever. I just kept waking up in the warm sun thinking 'this is such a great sleep. enjoy it more!'. and I did.

the same boat trip in the strip also inspired song lyrics I've written. they are included below

Lastley a song for this post. In the theme of my friend's art here is my oldest music friend, Freebie with shark eating a blue whale (goth mix). (<-dead link. will fix soon) enjoy my memories, and I promise next post will be a real story. *|

"..Supposed to be in my prime, I'm"

staying inside
7 days, 31 days, one whole glass of water.

I could almost go back out: 23 hours ago, 59 seconds ago, 11 months ago, all incomplete memories:

myself as a child, on a frozen sheet with waves poking through the one hole
keeping me from the other shore

but I'm stuck here, in my glass, in my bucket at the bottom of a well
built from these irreducable pasts that pushpull, up and down

5 years,
then 3,
then 2,
then I
smile
and think

"then o
to be in-between
the sand and the sea
the lake and the line of trees"

moving through each moment

pressed nowhere in-between

memories and dreams.

but we try to stop the future moving past:

staying up all night,

painting the sun rising over the burning treeline

waves splashing on the canvas pulling colours down.

We have failed before and will fail again, feeling the pushpull and closing our eyes

I will fall asleep out on the water
mouth wide open. dreams will move in and leave
I will forget these pieces of poems,they will forget me: tension in the cracks of buildings; weight waves out & in, the way you fold your hands.
In the way you fold your hands

I could connect those words, memories to make
I could read them aloud, and cough up some more water;

this same water from before,
pushing me, pulling me
back to shore

|* LINKS: FREEBIE'S MYSPACE *|

{defeating feeling}

2007-08-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

|* another attempt at short story drafting, if only for my biggest fan. the music this time comes from owl/eyes another old friend with a new cd. I quite like 'during a maiden speech' which is up on her myspace*|

A three is written into the the final available box, but it comes without the usual satisfaction. The puzzle was solved too easily. She had saved it for his moment: sitting in this folding chair in this damp Sunday night in August heat of the screened-in porch of her father's old house. She had moved through all other sections of the paper saving- anticipating- this final challenge sitting on the last page of the paper. Her pen scribbles stars underneath the filled grid. She looks out the porch window to see that the sky is clouded over; she cannot see these clouds, but she also cannot see the moon or any stars and so she knows that those dark clouds are hanging.

Her eyes return to the paper and take in all of the squares as a whole. Her system, her approach to the logic of the puzzle had worked too well. One number had led to the next and it had ended just when she felt like it might be getting interesting. Her eyes move over her scribbles and down to the bottom of the page: The Horoscopes. She had never noticed them there before, since she always threw out the paper right after finishing her puzzle. Yet there they are, sitting right along the bottom. Her finger scan along the signs and stops on Cancer, tucked in the bottom corner. She laughs, a short breath out her nose. She reads out loud to her self: "Today your life will spin out of control".

A soft thunder ripples in the clouds outside. She scans over all the other horoscopes: they are all the usual 5-7 sentences long filled with those vague specifics that have always annoyed her. Her once sentence sits at the end of these as the last things written in the paper. They clearly hadn't run out of space though: following her horoscope is a small block of empty space down to the bottom edges of the grey paper. Her hand taps on the small brown lamp beside her whose light falls out the little squares of the screens in her porch windows. The sound and feeling of the taps remind her that she had done this the last time she was here, the last time she had talked to her father.

She rereads her line again. None of the rest of the newspaper had seemed out of place to her. In fact, it had been in fine form. She preferred it to other papers because of its lightness: it seemed as if the writers knew that not many people read their Sunday edition. What resulted was the sense, at least to her, that the writers were simply writing for themselves. This disregard for the reader was clear in the puzzle section at the end of the paper, which was always filled with laughably hard puzzles.

The soft thunder rattles again outside of the window. Her pen tip is bouncing on that last line. It stops and moves to the empty space below. Slowly, she draws out a circle in this space, connecting one end with other. She smiles and sips from her herbal tea.

She tries to imagine what, at this point, could happen to make this horrible horoscope come true.

She comes up with nothing. The day is over, and the black night has long settled in. She is going to bed soon.

So she goes through her day in her mind: She woke up early, had some breakfast. She does not remember her life spinning out of control at that point. The majority of her day had been spent hiking up the mountain not far from this porch. Her and her father has done the same nearly every morning together before the family had moved away. She didn't know what to expect coming back to this mountain. She had been too young to have any real memories of it. She had seen many pictures of them climbing and at the summit together but through the rain and clouds on the hillside she couldn't even find these spots. For the whole length of the hike the mountain simply remained a steep path crunching underneath her feet. It never felt like the mountain in those pictures, so old and peaceful; or the mountain of her father's stories, 'the great challenge', 'the big fight'.

She looks back at her line, and the circle she had sketched underneath. The circle does not fill up the empty space at all but instead is quite wide and open. To her it looks as if it is just a frame around a blank picture. She feels a drop of rain fall through her screen window.

She moves to close the window over the screen, deciding as it shut that she would sleep here tonight. Curled in her blanket she would watch the sky lighting up, and feel the gentle shake of the thunder. That and she does not want to risk things spinning out of control between the porch and her bedroom; who knows what she could trip on in the dark? She smiles and reaches for her tea, but the cup is empty.

She turns the brown lamp off and sits in the dark. She looks up. Her father had put in a plastic sky-light in the porch, and it holds one of the few moments she can remember from this house: sitting in the dark looking at constellations. Tonight it is just black space. She closes her eyes.

She wonders why no one has ever used the cracks of thunder as percussion before. She tries to imagine a song to go with the thunder and rain rolling over her. She falls asleep sitting still on the lawn chair, breathing through her nose. She moves through dreams that she wont remember when she wakes up.

{un- done}

2007-08-18T07:04:00.001-07:00

***I am back fulfilling a promise to myself and to someone else. and to say to you: 'hi, thanks for sticking around buddy'. The post today will be accompanied by my favorite song from the new CD, "Oh My Darling", by a wonderful young lady named Basia Bulat. Her new CD is getting play in Europe, we heard a song by chance on the radio in Vienna. It's true that there is always jealousy mixed in with happiness when your friends become successful, but I console myself by saying better a good friend then some bastard who 'aint my friend, amiright? You know you are hitting the big time when you make it onto Mcsweeney's Reccomends which puts you in the same league as "Shaving without shaving cream when you first get out of the shower" and "A brisk early-morning walk".Those are some important things, no joke. Mcsweeney's happens to be the bookhouse I fantasize about being published on one fine day, and so I congratulate my dear friend. You could say I'm shaking hands with her with my right, and shaking my fist with my left.

Basia Bulat- snakes and ladders. ***

Amelia had learned how to fall asleep on her father's back, bobbing with the rhythm of his steps, feeling the heat between their two backs; a warm damp blanket. Today this warmth was not enough, a cold fog had settled on the mountainside, and it was still too early in the morning for the sun's warm breeze to cut through.

Her father had learned to sense her level of alertness: if he felt a limp baby body on his back, like carrying a misshapen sac of water, she was in a deep sleep. If Amelia was hard again his back though he knew she was awake, her movements and posture working against his. He felt her back tense up now, her shoulder pressing in and out of the middle of his back; she was rubbing her eyes. She was awake for good.

Amelia felt the light, cold dampness of the fog on her arms and face, a sharp contrast to the warmth on her back. Her hands started to shake, her gums chattered against one another so that she could feel the hardness of the teeth forming underneath. All of these strange feelings built up inside of her chest. Moisture clouded her eyes, and small sobs broke free moving from her chest and out her mouth. The strange contrast of heat and cold had been changed by her body into a single feeling she recognized in the warmth of her tears and the heaves of her sobs.

Amelia's cries broke her father out of his day dream. As usual during his runs, he had been playing an old memory over in his mind. This time it was his wife, years before they were married. She had been talking about how they, as a couple, would fight. She was happy with their arguments: small squabbles that wouldn't amount to anything. Better many little fights, she said, then letting tensions build up, higher and higher, until eventually coming out in a huge emotional battle. But Amelia's high pitch squeal brought him back to the mountain. Perhaps they should turn around now, it would only get colder the higher up the climbed. And yet they were so close to the top where they could warm up in mountain lodge. He would just have to push hard, get them into the lodge faster.

To Amelia the sound of her own cries, and her closed eyes, brought the whole world of sound into a stronger focus. She realized, listening to the sounds, that her father had been singing to her. Her ears remembered those other mornings where her father sang, and from that came the memory of the singing voice relaxing the weight in her chest; she held in a sob, feeling it melt away, and listened to those vaugley recognizable sounds coming from behind her.

Amelia began to soften on her father's back. He gasped on the thin air, singing in short bursts between hurried breaths, making up the words. He saw the last trail marker and felt Amelia, as soft a pillow, and knew that it was only five more minutes to the top. He thought about his wife, about their separate morning routines, about her driving to work on this Saturday morning, somewhere below the fog. A cold wind blew down from the peak; a shake against his back. He felt freezing rain bitting against his skin, and he clenched his teeth.

Amelia was awaken by her fathers body. Its rhythm was unusual, no gentle bobbing but quick ups and downs. She felt her head lean forward, wind moving around it, and horrible cold on her skin.

His legs burnt from the acid building up in them, but he kept on sprinting.

They were almost at the top.

LINKS: BASIA BULATS NEW CD COMES OUT IN CANADA ON SEPTEMBER 18TH

{we all get a cut}

2007-06-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

I sat down on the bus and decided that I felt like listening to an album. I was on my way home, and I was tired from a day of thinking. During the day I had been writing my final paper, arguing that we need to accept and think about the fact that human beings are animals. In the evening I had my class that this paper was for, teaching world issues.

I sat on the bus watching the suburbs pass through the inside of the bus reflected on the window. I listened to the sounds of Thee More Shallows, trying to follow along the amazing lyrics of their album More Deep Cuts. I thought about the class and the discussion we had. In the past week the class has taken a surprising turn, with presentations and lectures being replaced by really open, personal discussion. Today each person in the class was given a chance to sum up their life growing up, and how they worked out their roles in consumer society. It became a sort of therapy session, with people sharing quite personal stories about their past.

From these stories the conversation wandered over to the various struggles of growing up. At one point the conversation led us to ask if there was anyone who didn't have to deal with being bullied while growing up, and only one person raised their hand. Its things like that that make me realize when I walked through the halls in grade nine feeling completely and utterly alone, I actually feeling alone with quite a lot of other people who felt alone.

The bus stopped and I got off and walked through empty parking lots on the way to my house. And this song came on,

Ask Me About Jon Stross by Thee More Shallows

I stopped on a patch of grass between fields of pavement and sat down, felling the wind blow over my skin. I thought about those days when life felt barley worth living, and I tried to feel sad. There was no one around and I felt like the song was walking around all of the memories that had been brought up. But instead of being sad, the song came to its wonderful end and I smiled, knowing that what got me through growing up was the people I love.

So thanks for letting me share this with you,

thank you.

**links: the pink home of TheeMoreShallows , TMS myspace with songs from their new album

{cause the power of the people}

2007-05-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

This post will have to be short because I gots to work on my section of a group presentation that I'm giving today in my Teaching World Issues class. Our plan is to focus on water issues around the globe, and we are going to open with a reading of a water myth for the class. We're planning on being cheesily over dramatic by having the lights dimmed and a hand-drum that beats when we switch readers. In an attempt to class it up a bit I'm going to try to get the group to play 'water from the same source' by Rachels as we read. The reason why this song would be, and is, so good is that it puts you in a certain headspace. Like how right after watching a really good film things seem to looks a little bit different as if your life was carrying on the movie; in the exact same way after hearing this song I feel like water would feel if it was an emotion?

right, well...

My proof for this lingering feeling is how the song works on rachel's greatmazing album system/layers. This song sets up the rest of the album, like a river heading down a mountain into a lake. I feel justified in saying this because of the last song on that album 'ny snow globe' which I wont post here because that be akin to spoiling the end of a great film. Either way, nysnowglobe takes some water from that emotion stream and captures it again in a perfect, small glass sphere.

water from the same source by Rachels

No more water metaphors I promise. Instead let me tell that I now officially, somehow, love my job, especially the wonderful people who I get to work with. The second day was as sunny as the sky, and things really seemed like they would be okay. In honor of reminding yourself that things will be okay I'll post up a bonus song. If this song can't cheer you up you have a heart of ice (water metaphor!).

lugulugu kan-ibe by DAVID DARLING & THE WULU BUNUN

{my highlight from last night was being told: ketchup + chips > ketchupchips
then trying it out for myself and spilling katsup all over my white shirt. just so you know i washed the shirt when I got home at oneish and now the stain is gone!

justsoyouknow.

ps thanks jamjam for the actual chips. a good dinner they were}

links: rachels, david darling

{first day}

2007-05-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my first day as a canvaser, fundraising on the street for the redcross. I went into the job with mixed feelings because I'd always been vaugely annoyed by the slight sense of guilt I'd feel when I would fundraisers on the street. Yet after hearing about how much some of my friends loved the job, thinking about how much I enjoyed working with people outside for companies that I believe in, and considering my financial situation I decided to give the job a try.

I knew the job could be somewhat painful at times, dealing with so much polite rejection, but I was sure it wouldn't be anything too bad. I went into my first day of work determined to stay positive, to be fueled by whatever little victories I could manage, hell I even brought a book of my favourite comics to cheer me up during break time. I was also helped by the fact I wasn't alone: two other girls were also on their first shifts as canvassers and they were just as prepared (aka midly nervous) as I was.

I started the shift off ready to help make the world a better place, keeping a friendly smile on my face (I did not speak in rhymes though because that would have made me a disgrace). The day slowly wore me down. Hours went by without a single person stopping, but I reminded myself it was just a matter of time. The first few who did stop had angry words for me ( and they really had every right to be angry) but I felt like I handled it well. I saw one of the new girls getting her first person to sign up, and I reminded myself that meant my turn would be soon. Lunch arrived with only one person having stoped to talk to me, but all they said was: 'pure class. either you have it or you don't'.

to which my response was: '?!??!'.

At this point I could feel some worry creeping in, but I pressed on. I even got some people to stop and talk to me, but they all walked away unconvinced. At the end of the day the other girls handed in all of their filled sing-up sheets, and phone follow up sheets, while I handed in my empty binder.

I honestly would have been willing to stand on that corner for another 6 hours just to get one single person to sign up.

Instead I made my way home. In the car I was torn: I had been saving the we're marching on... EP for the drive as a sort of prize to myself for a job well done, and so I hesitated and considered throwing in a sad cd.I stopped and reminded myself that the only thing that could make this day worse was if I let it break my spirit completly, and with that I put on the 'arg! umph! ahhh!' EP by W.A.M.O.

The CD slowly worked on me, starting with some thumb tapping and humming along. Eventually I was singing even though I really didn't know the words. By the fourth song I felt like my heart was being put back together piece by piece. This song, 'anthem (futz'd)', is a slow building epic that, by the 6:30-minute-mark, had me singing at the top of my lungs and banging on the steering wheel.

And so as a way of getting myself to stop being so darned shy I started this blog. And the first thing I want to share with you is this song.

we're marching on...- anthem(futz'd)

(vist WAMO's myspace if only because whenever I see Tim from WAMO he calls me 'Gerry' (even thought he knows its not my name) because he saw it on my t-shirt. true class)

{This great car ride home was followed up by a great dinner with someone<3 and then a great movie (pan's labyrinth) all of which has helped me keep smilin'}